Using pubchempy / urllib behind proxy

[timothymillar]

I'm using PubChem from behind a proxy (Research institute).
I ran into error Errno 65:

>>> import pubchempy as pug
>>> compound = pug.Compound.from_cid(1423)
...
URLError: <urlopen error [Errno 65] No route to host>

A relatively simple fix is to specify proxy information via urllib:

>>> import urllib
>>> import pubchempy as pug
>>> proxies = {'http': 'http://<proxy.address>:<port>',
...            'https': 'https://<proxy.address>:<port>'}
>>> proxy_support = urllib.request.ProxyHandler(proxies)
>>> opener = urllib.request.build_opener(proxy_support)
>>> urllib.request.install_opener(opener)
>>> compound = pug.Compound.from_cid(1423)
>>> compound
Compound(1423)

The issue is that there is no mention of specifying proxy information in the PubChem documentation.
Addressing this in your documentation (even just a link to the urllib docs) could save others a lot of time.

[mcs07]

Thanks for the tip!