Send text "http" over python socket

python sockets http browser response

13,073

You are not returning a correctly formed HTTP response. Your line

connectionSocket.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK text/html') ## this is not working

is not even terminated by a newline, then immediately followed by the content of your file. Protocols like HTTP specify fairly rigorously what must be sent, and I find it little short of miraculous that you saw anything at all in your browser.

Try something like:

connectionSocket.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK\nContent-Type: text/html\n\n')

This is the start of a correctly-formed HTTP 1.1 response with a primary response line and a single header. The double newline terminates the headers, preparing the client to read the content that follows.

http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/http/ is one of many approachable ways to learn a bit more about the protocol you have chosen to use. Good luck!

13,073

Author by

Gopikrishna S

Updated on June 05, 2022

Comments

Gopikrishna S almost 2 years

I am trying to create a HTTP server using python. The thing is I am getting everything to work except for sending a response message; if the message has a text http, the send() doesn't work.

Here is the snippet of the code:

connectionSocket.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK text/html')

Here are the others I tried:

connectionSocket.send(''.join('%s 200 OK text/html' % ('HTTP/1.1')))
connectionSocket.send('%s 200 OK text/html' % ('HTTP/1.1'))
msg = 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK text/html'
for i in range(0, len(msg))
    connectionSocket.send(msg[i])

The only thing that seems to work is entity-fying the any of the character in HTTP, like

connectionSocket.send('&#72;TTP/1.1 200 OK text/html')

Where H is equivalent to H. Otherwise the browser doesn't display the header received from the python server socket.

The problem also goes when I am trying to send a 404 Message down the socket. The other contents are displayed, however, like a html file sent through the socket.

I want to know is there a proper way to do it? Because, if the client is not a browser, the html entity will not be understood.

Thanks in advance

Update:

Code:

from socket import *
serverSocket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)

serverSocket.setsockopt(SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
serverSocket.bind(('127.0.0.1', 1240))
serverSocket.listen(1);

while True:
  print 'Ready to serve...'
  connectionSocket, addr = serverSocket.accept()
  try:
    message = connectionSocket.recv(1024)
    filename = message.split()[1]
    f = open(filename[1:])
    outputdata = f.read()

    #Send one HTTP header line into socket
    connectionSocket.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK text/html') ## this is not working

    #Send the content of the requested file to the client
    for i in range(0, len(outputdata)):
        connectionSocket.send(outputdata[i])
    connectionSocket.close()

  except IOError:
    connectionSocket.send('&#72;TTP/1.1 404 File not found') ## this is not working
    connectionSocket.close();

serverSocket.close()

Screenshots:

Text as 'HTTP/1.1 ...'

enter image description here

Text as 'HTTP/1.1 ...'

enter image description here

HTML Code of hello.html

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Test Python</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello World!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Gopikrishna S about 10 years

The library is socket. from socket import *. And can you be more clear please, I can't understand whether you are saying the format is correct or not. "The quoted version (HTTP...) probably is not recognized by the HTTP protocol in the browser" -- the quoted version is what works. Others dont.
holdenweb about 10 years

connection_socket is the socket returned by an accept() call in the code. This is not the issue.
Alfe about 10 years

Yeah, my idea was wrong, obviously, if you are using socket.socket directly. I thought giving the HTTP explicitly additionally to an implicit HTTP the presumed underlying library produces automatically (which is of course not the case with socket.socket) would lead to a doubling and thus to a problem. Then giving it in a quoted form explicitly would have left the implicit part intact and thus cloaked the problem. You didn't say so right away, but now I guess that without the quoted version (i.e. also without an unquoted version) it also doesn't work. Am I right?
Gopikrishna S about 10 years

Thanks, that worked pretty well. I used connectionSocket.send('HTTP/1.1\n\n 200 OK Content-Type: text/html'); and it displayed everything from 200 to text/html. However, it didn't display the HTTP/1.1, as you guys said, it is stripped out.
holdenweb about 10 years

The "\n\n" is terminating the HTTP response early. Take a look at tcpipguide.com/free/t_HTTPResponseMessageFormat.htm to discover what you should be sending - it's very important to stick to the correct format here, you cannot just make it up as you go along, and a little reading will save you a lot of time.