Python discovery: urlparse - parse URLs with ease

I had a problem during testing: I wanted to test the query part of an url generated by a function. I was getting my regex hat out, when I started to wonder if the Python standard library included something to do what I sought to do.

A quick google search for "python parse url" did the trick. I found out about the urlparse module, which was clearly made for this purpose.

Example of parsing urls with python using the urlparse module:

    >>> from urlparse import urlparse
    >>> urlparse('http://www.example.com/pth?q=123#frag') 
    ParseResult(scheme='http', netloc='www.example.com', path='/pth', params='', query='q=123', fragment='frag')
    >>> parse_result = _
    >>> parse_result.scheme
    'http'
    >>> parse_result.query
    'q=123'
    >>> parse_result.fragment
    'frag'
    >>>

Lesson learned: There are many more things in the Python standard library than one would dare imagine.