Python - Proxy Server

Proxy servers are used to browse to some website through another server so that the browsing remains anonymous. It can also be used to bypass the blocking of specific IP addresses.

We use the urlopen method from the urllib module to access the website by passing the proxy server address as a parameter.

Example

In the below example we use a proxy address to access the website twitter.con for anonymous access. The response status of OK proves the successful access through a proxy server.

import urllib
URL = 'https://www.twitter.com'
PROXY_ADDRESS = "265.24.11.6:8080"
if __name__ == '__main__':
    resp = urllib.urlopen(URL, proxies = {"http" : PROXY_ADDRESS})
print "Proxy server returns response headers: %s " %resp.headers

When we run the above program, we get the following output −

Proxy server returns response headers: cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0
content-length: 145960
content-type: text/html;charset=utf-8
date: Mon, 02 Jul 2018 02:06:19 GMT
expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT
last-modified: Mon, 02 Jul 2018 02:06:19 GMT
pragma: no-cache
server: tsa_n
set-cookie: fm=0; Expires=Mon, 02 Jul 2018 02:06:10 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure; HTTPOnly
set-cookie: _twitter_sess=BAh7CSIKZmxhc2hJQzonQWN0aW9uQ29udHJvbGxlcjo6Rmxhc2g6OkZsYXNo%250ASGFzaHsABjoKQHVzZWR7ADoPY3JlYXRlZF9hdGwrCAifvVhkAToMY3NyZl9p%250AZCIlNzlhY2ZhMzdmNGFkYTU0ZTRmMDkxODRhNWNiYzI0MDI6B2lkIiUyZTgy%250AOTAyYjY4NTBkMzE3YzNjYTQwNzZjZDhhYjZhMQ%253D%253D--6807256d74a01129a7b0dcf383f56f169fb8a66c; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure; HTTPOnly
set-cookie: personalization_id="v1_iDacJdPWUx3e81f8UErWTA=="; Expires=Wed, 01 Jul 2020 02:06:19 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com
set-cookie: guest_id=v1%3A153049717939764273; Expires=Wed, 01 Jul 2020 02:06:19 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com
set-cookie: ct0=50c8b59b09322825cd750ea082e43bdc; Expires=Mon, 02 Jul 2018 08:06:19 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure
status: 200 OK
strict-transport-security: max-age=631138519
x-connection-hash: 89dfbab81abc35dd8f618509c6171bd3
x-content-type-options: nosniff
x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN
x-response-time: 312
x-transaction: 007b998000f86eaf
x-twitter-response-tags: BouncerCompliant
x-ua-compatible: IE=edge,chrome=1
x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block; report=https://twitter.com/i/xss_report