How to Customize the User Agent in Python\'s urllib2.urlopen?

Customizing User Agent with urllib2.urlopen

Downloaded webpages often display the default user agent string. However, there are scenarios where modifying this string is crucial. The question exposes this need and seeks a solution to alter the user agent during webpage download.

In Python 2.x, urllib2.urlopen serves as a tool to open a website and retrieve its content. The response can be leveraged to access the webpage's source code or establish connections. However, customizing the user agent for urllib2.urlopen is not immediately apparent.

The solution involves manually constructing an opener and specifying the desired user agent in the header. This modified opener can then be used to open the webpage, as depicted below:

<code class="python">opener = urllib2.build_opener()
opener.addheaders = [('User-Agent', 'Mozilla/5.0')]
response = opener.open('http://www.stackoverflow.com')</code>

Note that the user agent string is capitalized as per RFC 2616 section 14.43. This modification ensures that the webpage is downloaded with the specified user agent, potentially altering the perceived behavior of the requesting client.

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