Python: how to check the status of a URL

In this article we will see how to check the status of a URL with Python using the requests module.

We can perform a HEAD request and check if the returned HTTP status code is not equal to or greater than 400.

import requests

def check_url(url=None):
    if url is None:
        return False
    ok = True
    try:
        res = requests.head(url)
        ok = True if res.status_code >= 200 and res.status_code < 400 else False
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException:
        ok = False
    return ok

In case of HTTP errors or connection errors, our function will return the boolean value False.