The urllib2 behavior related to headers is - hmm - improvable. 
It simply capitalize() the key, which leads to funny results like:
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
while this is seemingly conforming to the specs, it's simply different 
to every other implementation of such things.. 

And we can do better. How about:
--- /usr/lib/python/urllib2.py  2008-01-10 19:03:55.000000000 +0100
+++ urllib2.py  2008-03-11 21:25:33.523890670 +0100
@@ -261,13 +261,16 @@ class Request:
     def is_unverifiable(self):
         return self.unverifiable

+    def _cap_header_key(self, key):
+        return '-'.join((ck.capitalize() for ck in key.split('-')))
+
     def add_header(self, key, val):
         # useful for something like authentication
-        self.headers[key.capitalize()] = val
+        self.headers[self._cap_header_key(key)] = val

     def add_unredirected_header(self, key, val):
         # will not be added to a redirected request
-        self.unredirected_hdrs[key.capitalize()] = val
+        self.unredirected_hdrs[self._cap_header_key(key)] = val

     def has_header(self, header_name):
         return (header_name in self.headers or

I'm not happy with the _cap_header_key name, but you get the idea.
The patch is optimized to operate with maximum locality. It's also 
attached.

I would be very grateful, if something similar could be applied.

Opinions?

I understand your implementation of _cap_header_key function.
But should not this patch be handled in a way wherein.
key.capitalize() is just replaced by key.upper()?

Should not that suffice?
What is the difference between _cap_header_key and key.upper()?

Thank you,
Senthil

> But should not this patch be handled in a way wherein.
> key.capitalize() is just replaced by key.upper()?

Hmm, are you sure?
>>> "hello".upper()
'HELLO'
>>> 

but the issue is with values containing dashes:
>>> 'accept-charset'.capitalize()
'Accept-charset'
whereas the rest of the world would expect:
'Accept-Charset'
        ^

This is especially useful, if you try to emulate the behavior of a
typical browser as close as possible.

urllib2.Request.headers is, in practice, an undocumented public
interface.  Did you run the tests?  There is room for improvement here,
but not in the way you suggest.

python[1]$ python2.6
iPython 2.6a1+ (trunk:62045M, Mar 30 2008, 03:07:23) 
[GCC 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import test.test_urllib2
>>> print test.test_urllib2.test_request_headers_dict.__doc__

    The Request.headers dictionary is not a documented interface.  It should
    stay that way, because the complete set of headers are only accessible
    through the .get_header(), .has_header(), .header_items() interface.
    However, .headers pre-dates those methods, and so real code will be
using
    the dictionary.

    The introduction in 2.4 of those methods was a mistake for the same
reason:
    code that previously saw all (urllib2 user)-provided headers in .headers
    now sees only a subset (and the function interface is ugly and
incomplete).
    A better change would have been to replace .headers dict with a dict
    subclass (or UserDict.DictMixin instance?)  that preserved the .headers
    interface and also provided access to the "unredirected" headers.  It's
    probably too late to fix that, though.


    Check .capitalize() case normalization:

    >>> url = "http://example.com"
    >>> Request(url, headers={"Spam-eggs": "blah"}).headers["Spam-eggs"]
    'blah'
    >>> Request(url, headers={"spam-EggS": "blah"}).headers["Spam-eggs"]
    'blah'

    Currently, Request(url, "Spam-eggs").headers["Spam-Eggs"] raises
KeyError,
    but that could be changed in future.

    
>>>

Specifically, these improvements could be made:

 * the headers actually sent to httplib could be normalized to
Standard-Http-Case by urllib2
 * the urllib2.Request.headers interface could support case-insensitive
key lookup

Hi John, Greetings!
I agree with both of your suggestions.
Attached is the patch which aims to implement both in one go.
Please provide your comments on that.
If this method is okay, I shall go ahead with patches for tests and
attach it also.

Thanks,
Senthil

Hi Senthil,

that looks promising, and the title() trick is nice, as it fixes my 
issue.. 

Thanks,
Pete

This looks good.  I would suggest that the unredirected_hdrs would use
the CaseInsensitiveDict too.

There is still the problem (from the test documentation) that accessing
.headers directly will only show a subset of headers i.e. it won't show
any headers from .unredirected_hdrs.  Have you any suggestions as to how
they both can be accessed from the same interface?

The test documentation also says:

"Note the case normalization of header names here, to
.capitalize()-case.  This should be preserved for
backwards-compatibility.  (In the HTTP case, normalization to
.title()-case is done by urllib2 before sending headers to
httplib)."

It suggests that capitalize() should be kept for backwards
compatibility.  I have tested and the headers actually sent to the
server are in title()-case even though they are stored in the Request
object as captitalize()-case.

This would initially suggest that the case-normalization should be
removed from the patch.  However, as .headers would now be using a
case-insensitive dictionary, this would still ensure backwards compatibily.

Issue applicable to Py2.6 and Py3K. Previous patch attached was wrong.
Removed it.

Senthil: We would need some tests to assure this will keep working ok in
the future

Also as this is (somehow) a new functionality, we'd need to modify the
NEWS file and maybe even the docs (a comment about this case insensitivity?

Could you please send a patch for these? Thank you!

Please have a look at this patch.
- Included a CaseInsensitiveDict Lookup for Headers interface.
- Headers will now be .title()-ed instead of .capitalized() ed.
- Included Tests for the changes made.

In the test_urllib2, I have not removed this line (yet).
"The Request.headers dictionary is not a documented interface.."
- I shall attach the patch to the documentation next. Will this suffice
to remove the declaration of "not a documented interface"?

Please provide your comments on the attached patch. If this is fine, I
shall do the same modifications for py3k and patch docs as well.

Thanks!

Senthil: patch is fine.

Remember to provide not only a modification for docs, but also to the
Misc/NEWS file.

Thank you!!

Here is the final patch for Py26 and Py3k including the Docs and Misc/News.

Thanks you,
Senthil

I also removed the Python 2.5 from the Version, as I don't think these
changes will be back ported.
After the application of patch, this issue can be closed.

* The patch looks like it will break code that uses .header_items(),
which is not acceptable.

* The patch to the docs seems to muddy the waters even further (than the
current slightly murky state) about whether and why .headers is to be
preferred over the methods, or vice-versa.  I think .headers should
remain undocumented, for the reason stated by the doctest that failed
with Hans-Peter's original patch.  The best course of action is
debatable, but the patch is a regression in this respect, so should not
be committed as-is.

John:

You say that it will break code because it changes the capitalization
policy, or because other reason? Do you think that there's a way to fix
this issue and not break the code? 

If you really think that this breaks code, please provide a test case.

Regarding .headers, having a public attribute not documented never is a
better solution than document it, with its benefits and its shortcomings. 

Thanks.

> John J Lee <jjlee@users.sourceforge.net> added the comment:
> 
> * The patch looks like it will break code that uses .header_items(),
> which is not acceptable.

Nope, it does not break. If the concern was subclassing dict may have adverse
effect on .copy and .update methods, thats taken care because the subclass just passes it to the original dict method, which would behave the same way.

    >>> r.header_items()
    [('Spam-Eggs', 'blah')]
    >>> r.add_header("Foo-Bar", "baz")
    >>> items = r.header_items()
    >>> items.sort()
    >>> items
    [('Foo-Bar', 'baz'), ('Spam-Eggs', 'blah')]

> * The patch to the docs seems to muddy the waters even further (than the
> current slightly murky state) about whether and why .headers is to be
> preferred over the methods, or vice-versa.  I think .headers should
> remain undocumented, for the reason stated by the doctest that failed
> with Hans-Peter's original patch.

IIRC, Hans-Peter's comment was on the reference to .headers undocumented interface mentioned in the test_urllib2.

>  The best course of action is
> debatable, but the patch is a regression in this respect, so should not
> be committed as-is.

My understanding in this case was to address 1) Title()-ize the headers and 2)
provide a case insensitive lookup.

Is this sufficient now to expose the headers method? If not, what else?
If headers method should not be exposed, then will the 2 cases addressed above
still do, as this issue request was opened for that?

Facundo, first of all: *really* nice work, thanks a lot.

While I don't fully understand the issues raised lately here, 
especially what broke (user code). I can see, that it completely 
solves my original problem, which is great.

While reading the patch, I noticed, that the modifications to 
Doc/library/urllib2.rst contain two typos ("retrive" instead 
of "retrieve").

The only remaining issue left in this area is using some form of 
ordered dict for headers in order to control - how it comes - the 
order of headers ;-), but that's left for another issue to raise some 
day.

There already is a test for the breakage, but the patch changes the
expected output to match the new return value of .header_items():

-    [('Foo-bar', 'baz'), ('Spam-eggs', 'blah')]
+    [('Foo-Bar', 'baz'), ('Spam-Eggs', 'blah')]

Code that previously worked fine, for example code that iterates through
.header_items() and does string comparisons on the header names, or does
"in" tests on the keys of dict(header_items), etc. will break, the
existence of .has_header() notwithstanding.

What is the purpose of this change?  Can you explain how that justifies
breaking working code?

The alternative to this change is to leave the return value of
.header_items() unchanged.  That could be done by performing case
normalisation at a later stage.

> > * The patch to the docs seems to muddy the waters even further (than the
> > current slightly murky state) about whether and why .headers is to be
> > preferred over the methods, or vice-versa.  I think .headers should
> > remain undocumented, for the reason stated by the doctest that failed
> > with Hans-Peter's original patch.
> 
> IIRC, Hans-Peter's comment was on the reference to .headers
undocumented interface mentioned in the test_urllib2.

I made no reference to Hans-Peter's comment -- only to his patch, so I
don't know what you're getting at here.  Could you respond to my
comment, please?

> >  The best course of action is
> > debatable, but the patch is a regression in this respect, so should not
> > be committed as-is.
> 
> My understanding in this case was to address 1) Title()-ize the
headers and 2)
> provide a case insensitive lookup.

Can you explain why you think providing case-insensitive lookup requires
documenting .headers?


> Is this sufficient now to expose the headers method? If not, what else?
> If headers method should not be exposed, then will the 2 cases
addressed above
> still do, as this issue request was opened for that?

There is no method named "headers".  I think that the .headers attribute
should never be documented, because it does not contain the
"unredirected headers".  Changing that behaviour would break code,
further confuse matters and complicate writing code that works with
multiple versions of Python.  A case *could* be made for changing it (by
including the "unredirected headers"), because other code will have been
broken by the introduction of .unredirected_hdrs; I prefer instead to
stick with old breakage rather than swapping it for new breakage, but as
I say, the best course of action is debatable.  Another choice would be
to start the process of deprecating .headers, and introduce a new
attribute with a similar function.  As long as your chosen solution
isn't actually a step backwards or sharply sideways, I probably won't
object very strongly.  What isn't really debatable is that the patch
makes things worse here: it adds a newly-documented interface which is
subtly and surprisingly different from the other one (an unacceptable
change in itself, IMO) without even explaining the difference between
the two, why they are different, and why one would want to use or avoid
one or other interface.

There are other problems with the documentation patch, but there's no
point in discussing those until the changes are agreed on.

Just to quickly note that by "providing case-insensitive lookup" I don't
necessarily mean via .headers.  But it's you who's providing the patch,
so I'll wait for your next suggestion rather than discuss how I might
change the code.

Sorry for the delay and my miss in further communication on this issue.
I would like to take this issue in two fronts for its closure.

1) Issue with headers .capitalize() vs .title()
2) Documenting the Interface

With respect to point 1), I assume that we all agree upon that headers
should stored in Titled-Format instead of Capitalized-format. 

So I went ahead with the implementation of Titled format with a
CaseInsensitive Lookup so that previous code using Capitalize format
would also return values from the headers dict.

John: I agree with your point that these changes would break the
.header_items() that returns a list of Titled() key-value pairs, whereas
the previous existing code would be expecting Capitalized key-value
pairs. CaseInsensitive Dict lookup would not solve it.

I had assumed that new code will be confirming to it and changed the
tests. Even though I thought about it, I did not bring it up for
discussion for backward compatibility header_items() method.

- I don't have a solution for how to make header_items() backward
compatible if we go for headers title() change. I shall try to come up
by today.

Now, if we go for a Case Normalization at the much later stage, will the
headers be stored still in capitalize() format? ( In that case, this bug
requests it be stored in .titled() format confirming to many practices)
Would you like to explain a bit more on that?


We can address the documentation of interface later to coming upon
conclusion on the first one.

> With respect to point 1), I assume that we all agree upon that headers
> should stored in Titled-Format instead of Capitalized-format. 

I would probably choose to store the headers in Capitalized-form,
because that makes implementing .headers trivial.

[...]
> Now, if we go for a Case Normalization at the much later stage, will the
> headers be stored still in capitalize() format? ( In that case, this bug
> requests it be stored in .titled() format confirming to many practices)
> Would you like to explain a bit more on that?

Implement .get_header() and friends using .headers, along the lines of:

    def get_header(self, header_name, default=None):
        return self.headers.get(
            header_name,
            self.unredirected_hdrs.get(header_name, default)).title()

And then ensure that the headers actually passed to httplib also get
.title()-cased.  This also has the benefit, compared with your patch, of
leaving the behaviour of non-HTTP URL schemes unchanged.

Of course, that "along the lines of" suggestion isn't quite right: None
does not have a .title() method.

(and, to spell it out, I'm assuming in that suggestion that .headers is
the dict of headers with .capitalize()d keys, i.e. unchanged from Python
2.5)

I am submitting a revised patch for this issue.
I did some analysis on the history of this issue and found that this
.capitalize() vs .title() changes had come up earlier too (
issue1542948)and decision was taken to:
- To retain the Header format in .capitalize() to maintain backward
compatibility.
- However, when the headers are passed to httplib, they are converted to
.title() format ( see AbstractHTTPHandler method )
- It is encouraged that users uses .add_header(), .has_header(),
.get_header() methods to check for headers instead of using the .headers
dict directly (which will still remain undocumented interface).

Note to Hans-Peter would be: Changing the headers to .title() tends to
make the .header_items() retrieval backward incompatible, so the headers
will still be stored in .capitalize() format.

And I have made the following changes to the patch:
1) Support for case insensitive dict look up which will work with for
.has_header, .get_header(). So when .has_header("User-Agent") will
return True even when .headers give {"User-agent":"blah"}
2) Added tests to tests the behavior.
3) Changes to doc to reflect upon this issue.

Btw, the undocumented .headers interface will also support
case-insensitive lookup, so I have added tests for that too.

Let me know if you have any comments. Lets plan to close this issue.

Thanks,

I'm ok with these patchs, Senthil.

John, what do you think about this?

Facundo, Shall we go ahead with committing these changes?

The CaseInsensitive dict class fails to preserve its invariants (implied
invariants, since there are no tests for it).  There are also problems
with the documentation in the patch.  I will submit a modified patch, I
hope later this week.

By the way, this is a feature addition, not a bug fix.  The first beta
releases for 2.6 and 3.0 came out some time ago, so according to PEP
361, this change should not be committed to trunk until after the 2.6 /
3.0 maintenance branches have been created.

I have attached a patch that just:

 * Improves doctests a bit
 * Changes .get_headers() and .has_header() to be case-insensitive
 * Documents .get_header() and .header_items(), fixes some
incorrectly-documented argument names, and notes the case-sensitivity change
 * Note that the headers passed to httplib (the original issue for which
this bug was raised) were already correctly Title-Cased, and that is
unchanged by this patch

Options:

 * Apply my patch.  I'd be happy with this.
 * Apply my patch and begin the process of deprecating public interfaces
.unredirected_hdrs and .headers.  Perhaps provide another interface to
tell whether a header will be redirected (only if there's a use case for
that).  I'd be happy with this too.
 * Bring back Senthil's case-normalized .headers and .unredirected_hdrs
and document those interfaces.  This a bad idea, because this would
result in a very confusing set of interfaces for dealing with headers
(see my previous comments on this -- Date: 2008-07-11 19:44).

(For what it's worth, I have also attached a doctest to show some
examples of the broken invariants issue with Senthil's patch.  The
doctest also comments on the fact that making .headers case-insensitive
in this way is quite confusing in the case where multiple items of
different case are present, but __getitem__ returns only a single item
-- this is a relatively minor issue, but still worth avoiding.  The
variation of choosing to discard items that normalize to the same string
would avoid this problem, though it might break working code that relies
on sending multiple headers with differing case, so I think this would
be no better overall.)

No idea if this is even still valid (I skimmed the issue, I did not try to understand it in detail), but I agree that a change like this is more feature than bug fix, so I'm updating the issue settings accordingly.

I think, we need to move forward with this. It is one of the earliest i worked on. I shall look at John's patch and look through it's inclusion in the code.

I'd like to add that when supplying custom headers for things like UPNP (which uses SOAPACTION as a header to talk to frequently very limited servers), the library shouldn't mangle the headers in any way whatsoever and send them verbatim. 

(I consider that mangling to be a bug, and not a new feature. HTTP headers may be case-insensitve according to standards, but embedded implementations require us to have a degree of control over the headers, and failing to preserve header case is a bug.)

Right now I've had to replace httplib and urllib2 with my own custom code because the SOAPACTION header is capitalized and sent to the server as "Soapaction", which breaks the Intel embedded UPNP daemon.

Title case is not the right thing for all headers: TE, WWW-Authenticate, etc.

While we're changing this, why not implement something to return headers in the order recommended in the RFC?  (Probably another feature request)

Should one look into the source and make effort to submit a patch, or is
this being handled somehow?

It looks like there is a patch, so a patch review would be the next step (as indicated by the stage, not that we always remember to update that...)

Reading the issue carefully and making sure that all the concerns are addressed is also required.  A comitter will ultimately have to do that, but anyone can do such a review and point out any issues, and that will help get this resolved sooner.

Rui: See Issue 12455 about changing the letter case of field names sent to the server. Unless someone wants to write a patch to fix all the bugs at once, I suggest to keep this thread focussed on Request.has_header() etc.

I closed Issue 5550 as a duplicate of this one. There is a patch there from 2014 which does the same sort of thing as John’s issue2775.patch from 2008, but IMO John’s patch would be more efficient. It needs updating for Python 3.6 though.

The remove_header() method (added in 3.4) should also be adjusted to be case-insensitive.

It may also be worth clarifying in the header_items() documentation that the keys have been converted as if by str.capitalize().

FTR: John’s issue2775.patch seems to be Patch Set 1 in the code review, despite being third in the list above.

Please review insensitive-lookup.patch:

* Adapt John’s patch to current code
* Apply similar changes to Request.remove_header()
* Expanded on case-insensitivity, previous capitalize() requirements, and header_items() casing in the documentation
* Dropped testing of unredirected_hdrs and of headers being case-sensitive. I think these are implementation details, and are not part of the implicit API from before the has_header() etc methods.
* Reverted unnecessary test removal in test case
* Added What’s New entry