11. Internet Protocols and Support

The modules described in this chapter implement Internet protocols and support for related technology. They are all implemented in Python. Most of these modules require the presence of the system-dependent module socket, which is currently supported on most popular platforms. Here is an overview:

cgi Common Gateway Interface support, used to interpret forms in server-side scripts.
urllib Open an arbitrary network resource by URL (requires sockets).
httplib HTTP protocol client (requires sockets).
ftplib FTP protocol client (requires sockets).
gopherlib Gopher protocol client (requires sockets).
poplib POP3 protocol client (requires sockets).
imaplib IMAP4 protocol client (requires sockets).
nntplib NNTP protocol client (requires sockets).
smtplib SMTP protocol client (requires sockets).
telnetlib Telnet client class.
urlparse Parse URLs into components.
SocketServer A framework for network servers.
BaseHTTPServer Basic HTTP server (base class for SimpleHTTPServer and CGIHTTPServer).
SimpleHTTPServer This module provides a request handler for HTTP servers.
CGIHTTPServer This module provides a request handler for HTTP servers which can run CGI scripts.
asyncore A base class for developing asynchronous socket handling services.


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