socket ResourceWarning using urllib in Python 3
python, python-3.x, urllib, warnings
Solution
I don't know if this is the answer, but it is part of the way to an answer.
If I add the header "connection: close" to the response from my web services, the HTTPResponse object seems to clean itself up properly without a warning.
And in fact, the HTTP Spec (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html) says:
HTTP/1.1 applications that do not support persistent connections MUST include the "close" connection option in every message.
So the problem was on the server end (i.e. my fault!). In the event that you don't have control over the headers coming from the server, I don't know what you can do.
Problem
I am using a urllib.request.urlopen() to GET from a web service I'm trying to test. This returns an HTTPResponse object, which I then read() to get the response body. But I always see a ResourceWarning about an unclosed socket from socket.py Here's the relevant function: ``` from urllib.request import Request, urlopen def get_from_webservice(url): """ GET from the webservice """ req = Request(url, method="GET", headers=HEADERS) with urlopen(req) as rsp: body = rsp.read().decode('utf-8') return json.loads(body) ``` Here's the warning as it appears in the program's output: ``` $ ./test/test_webservices.py /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3/lib/python3.3/socket.py:359: ResourceWarning: unclosed <socket.socket object, fd=5, family=30, type=1, proto=6> self._sock = None .s ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ran 2 tests in 0.010s OK (skipped=1) ``` If there's anything I can do to the HTTPResponse (or the Request?) to make it close its socket cleanly, I would really like to know, because this code is for my unit tests; I don't like ignoring warnings anywhere, but especially not there.