title: Get HTTP response header using Python requests module
body: <p>I am using 'requests' module in Python to query a RESTful API endpoint.  Sometimes, the endpoint returns an HTTP Error 500.  I realize I can get the status code using requests.status_code but when I get error 500, I'd like to see the HTTP "response text" (I'm not sure what it's called, examples below).  So far I've been able to get some of the headers using response.headers.  However, the info I'm looking for is still not there.</p>
  
  <p>Using "curl -vvv", I can see the HTTP response that I'm after (some output omitted for clarity):</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt; HTTP/1.1 200 OK &lt;---------------------this is what I'm after)
  * Server nginx/1.4.1 is not blacklisted
  &lt; Server: nginx/1.4.1
  &lt; Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2014 16:13:25 GMT
  &lt; Content-Type: application/octet-stream
  &lt; Connection: close
  &lt; Set-Cookie: webapp.session.id="mYzk5NTc0MDZkYjcxZjU4NmM=|1391616805|f83c47a363194c1ae18e"; expires=Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:13:25 GMT; Path=/
  &lt; Content-Disposition: attachment; filename = "download_2014161325.pdf"
  &lt; Cache-Control: public
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Again, that's from curl.  Now, when I use Python's request module and ask for headers, this is all I get:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CaseInsensitiveDict(
   {
    'date': 'Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:56:45 GMT',
    'set-cookie': 'webapp.session.id="xODgzNThlODkzZ2U0ZTg=|1391551005|a11ca2ad11195351f636fef"; expires=Thu, 06 Mar 2014 21:56:45 GMT; Path=/, 
    'connection': 'close',
    'content-type': 'application/json',
    'server': 'nginx/1.4.1'
   }
  )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Notice the curl response includes "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" but the requests.headers does not.  Nearly everything else in the response headers are there.  The requests.status_code gives me the 200.  In this example, all I'm after is the "OK".  In other scenarios, our nginx server returns more detailed messages, like "HTTP/1.1 500 search unavailable" or "HTTP/1.1 500 bad parameters", etc.  I'd like to get this text.  Is there a way or could I hack something with Popen and curl?  Requests.content and requests.text don't help.</p>