["python","url"]
Python: Get URL path sections

How do I get specific path sections from a url? For example, I want a function which operates on this: http://www.mydomain.com/hithere?image=2934 and returns "hithere" or operates on this: http://www.mydomain.com/hithere/something/else and returns the same thing ("hithere") I know this will probably use urllib or urllib2 but I can't figure out from the docs how to get only a section of the path.
Extract the path component of the URL with urlparse (Python 2.7): import urlparse path = urlparse.urlparse('http://www.example.com/hithere/something/else').path print path > '/hithere/something/else' or urllib.parse (Python 3): import urllib.parse path = urllib.parse.urlparse('http://www.example.com/hithere/something/else').path print(path) > '/hithere/something/else' Split the path into components with os.path.split: >>> import os.path >>> os.path.split(path) ('/hithere/something', 'else') The dirname and basename functions give you the two pieces of the split; perhaps use dirname in a while loop: >>> while os.path.dirname(path) != '/': ... path = os.path.dirname(path) ... >>> path '/hithere'