---
id: httplib2
version: "0.32.0"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# httplib2 — A comprehensive HTTP client library.

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Popularity: top 1,000 on PyPI

## Install

pip install httplib2
uv add httplib2
poetry add httplib2

## Description

A comprehensive HTTP client library, ``httplib2`` supports many features left out of other HTTP libraries.

**HTTP and HTTPS**
  HTTPS support is only available if the socket module was compiled with SSL support.


**Keep-Alive**
  Supports HTTP 1.1 Keep-Alive, keeping the socket open and performing multiple requests over the same connection if possible.


**Authentication**
  The following three types of HTTP Authentication are supported. These can be used over both HTTP and HTTPS.

  * Digest
  * Basic
  * WSSE

**Caching**
  The module can optionally operate with a private cache that understands the Cache-Control:
  header and uses both the ETag and Last-Modified cache validators. Both file system
  and memcached based caches are supported.


**All Methods**
  The module can handle any HTTP request method, not just GET and POST.


**Redirects**
  Automatically follows 3XX redirects on GETs.


**Compression**
  Handles both 'deflate' and 'gzip' types of compression.


**Lost update support**
  Automatically adds back ETags into PUT requests to resources we have already cached. This implements Section 3.2 of Detecting the Lost Update Problem Using Unreserved Checkout


**Unit...

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

httplib2 is a comprehensive HTTP client library for Python that handles HTTP/HTTPS requests with support for keep-alive connections, multiple authentication methods, response caching, compression, and automatic redirect following.

Verdict: httplib2 is a stable, actively maintained HTTP client with no known vulnerabilities and permissive licensing. It offers feature-rich functionality including caching, authentication, and compression in a lightweight package with minimal dependencies. Suitable for projects needing comprehensive HTTP handling beyond basic requests.

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/httplib2) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/httplib2/)