HTTPS won't work, no matter which lib and how.

[Phillip]

Hi.
I'm having some anoying trouble trying to establish a https connection.
I've even switched Python Versions (from 2.2.3 to 2.3.3), but the Errors 
remain basically the same, allthough they now come in nice XML :-).

Here are some examples:

My last desperate try (which is way off the book):
 >>>
import re
import base64
import httplib
import urllib2
import string
# don't know if I need this one, it doesn't fix anything it seems...
import socket

suffix = r"blah"
prefix = r"jada"

basicAuth = base64.encodestring(prefix + r":" + suffix)

kopf = {"Basic": basicAuth}

req =  urllib2.Request(url="https://myurl/", data="", headers = kopf)
fileLines = urllib2.https_open(req)
print "Recieved:"
print fileLines
<<<
This is the Error it throws:
  ./gethttps.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "./gethttps.py", line 30, in ?
     fileLines = urllib2.https_open(req)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'https_open'


The obvious one doesn't work either ALTHOUGH it's an Example from the 
official urllib2 docs!!!:
 >>>
import re
import base64
import httplib
import urllib2
import string
import socket

suffix = r"blah"
prefix = r"jada"

basicAuth = base64.encodestring(prefix + r":" + suffix)

kopf = {"Basic": basicAuth}

req =  urllib2.Request(url="https://myurl/", data="", headers = kopf)

fileLines = urllib2.urlopen(req)

print "Recieved:"
print fileLines
<<<
Here are the Errors throwed:
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "./gethttps.py", line 25, in ?
     fileLines = urllib2.urlopen(req)
   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/urllib2.py", line 129, in urlopen
     return _opener.open(url, data)
   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/urllib2.py", line 331, in open
     'unknown_open', req)
   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/urllib2.py", line 306, in _call_chain
     result = func(*args)
   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.3/urllib2.py", line 914, in unknown_open
     raise URLError('unknown url type: %s' % type)
urllib2.URLError: <urlopen error unknown url type: https>



Does anybody have any Idea how I can open a https connection using 
Python? The http, urllib and urllib2 in a whole seem quite a messy bunch 
and I have had no success so far trying to grasp how to handle large 
parts of them.
There are traces on the web saying that some socket stuff needs ssl 
compiled into them in order for https stuff to work, but they seem old 
and since I'm using the fresh original sources from www.python.org on a 
Debian Linux system I presume that compiling should work A-OK.
If anybody thinks this is likeley to be a compiling issue, how and where 
do I change the original source distribution to support https? In some 
make or configure file maybe? I have no Idea. How do I find out if ssl 
is supported in my install?
I'd be glad if someone could help, this all is driving me nuts.

Thanks.

Phillip

BTW: Since there is apsolutely no documentation on how to use the larger 
part of urllib2's stuff on python.org it would be nice if someone could 
also point out a howto or some working examples of how and in which 
situations to use these classes and methods, such as OpenerDirector(???) 
and such.