(python) [Errno 11001] getaddrinfo failed

Question

Can someone help me on how I can catch this error?

import pygeoip  
gi = pygeoip.GeoIP('GeoIP.dat')  
print gi.country_code_by_name('specificdownload.com')  

Traceback (most recent call last):  
  File "<module1>", line 14, in <module>  
  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pygeoip\__init__.py", line 447, in country_code_by_name  
    addr = self._gethostbyname(hostname)  
  File "build\bdist.win-amd64\egg\pygeoip\__init__.py", line 392, in _gethostbyname  
    return socket.gethostbyname(hostname)  
gaierror: [Errno 11001] getaddrinfo failed 

Answer 1

Well, let’s ask Python what type of exception that is:

#!/usr/bin/env python2.7

import pygeoip
gi = pygeoip.GeoIP('GeoIP.dat')
try:
    print gi.country_code_by_name('specificdownload.com')
except Exception, e:
    print type(e)
    print e

Prints:

$ ./foo.py
<class 'socket.gaierror'>
[Errno 8] nodename nor servname provided, or not known

So we need to catch socket.gaierror, like so:

#!/usr/bin/env python2.7

import pygeoip
import socket
gi = pygeoip.GeoIP('GeoIP.dat')
try:
    print gi.country_code_by_name('specificdownload.com')
except socket.gaierror:
    print 'ignoring failed address lookup'

Though there’s still the question of, what the heck is gaierror? Google turns up the socket.gaierror documentation, which says,

This exception is raised for address-related errors, for getaddrinfo() and getnameinfo()

So GAI Error = Get Address Info Error.