title: What is the quickest way to HTTP GET in Python?
body: <p>What is the quickest way to HTTP GET in Python if I know the content will be a string? I am searching the documentation for a quick one-liner like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>contents = url.get("http://example.com/foo/bar")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But all I can find using Google are <code>httplib</code> and <code>urllib</code> - and I am unable to find a shortcut in those libraries.</p>
  
  <p>Does standard Python 2.5 have a shortcut in some form as above, or should I write a function <code>url_get</code>?</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I would prefer not to capture the output of shelling out to <code>wget</code> or <code>curl</code>.</li>
  </ol>