Checking internet connection with Python

Question

I’m working on an application that uses internet so I need to check if there is an internet connection at the load of the application so I use this function:

def is_connected():

    try:
        print "checking internet connection.."
        host = socket.gethostbyname("www.google.com")
        s = socket.create_connection((host, 80), 2)
        s.close()
        print 'internet on.'
        return True

    except Exception,e:
        print e
        print "internet off."
    return False

Sometimes it fails although there is an internet connection, it says ‘timed out’. I also tried using urllib2 to send a request to Google but it took time and timed out too. Is there a better way to do it? I’m using Windows 7 and Python 2.6.6.

Asked By: oridamari

||

Source

Answer 1

you should do something like

def check_internet():
    for timeout in [1,5,10,15]:
        try:
            print "checking internet connection.."
            socket.setdefaulttimeout(timeout)
            host = socket.gethostbyname("www.google.com")
            s = socket.create_connection((host, 80), 2)
            s.close()
            print 'internet on.'
            return True

        except Exception,e:
            print e
            print "internet off."
    return False

or even better (mostly taken from other answer linked in comments)

def internet_on():
    for timeout in [1,5,10,15]:
        try:
            response=urllib2.urlopen('http://google.com',timeout=timeout)
            return True
        except urllib2.URLError as err: pass
    return False

Answered By: Joran Beasley

Answer 2

You can also use another Library to do it. If you’re pulling in any content I would highly suggest using Requests.

Joran has a great answer, it definitely works. Another approach is:

def checkNet():
    import requests
    try:
        response = requests.get("http://www.google.com")
        print "response code: " + response.status_code
    except requests.ConnectionError:
        print "Could not connect"

The benefit is you can use the response object and just continue on with your work (response.text etc..)

It’s always faster to try it and handle the error if it breaks than do needless checks repeatedly.

Answered By: Kelvin

Answer 3

I would suggest you to use urllib. Is a pre-installed library and you don’t need to install extra library.
That’s my propose:

def isConnected():
    import urllib
    from urllib import request
    try:
        urllib.request.urlopen('http://google.com') # If you want you can add the timeout parameter to filter slower connections. i.e. urllib.request.urlopen('http://google.com', timeout=5)

        return True
    except:
        return False

Answered By: Luca

Answer 4

I think this should work, Do this:
Make a Def function and put this in it

try:
    print ("checking internet connection..")
    host = socket.gethostbyname("www.google.com")
    s = socket.create_connection((host, 80), 2)
    s.close()
    print ('internet on.')
    return True

except Exception:
    print ("internet off.")

Answered By: Aryan Rathore

Answer 5

Use this function to check internet availability

    def check_internet():
        os.system('ping -c1 github.com > rs_net 2>&1')
        if "0% packet loss" in open('rs_net').read():
            val = 1
        else:
            val = 0
        os.system('rm rs_net > /dev/null 2>&1')
        return val

    if check_internet() == 1:
        print("Connected to network")

Answered By: Kiran S

Checking internet connection with Python

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