permit insecure connections with urllib2.urlopen in python 2.7.x >= 2.7.9

gistfile1.py

# Because migrating to python 2.7.9 requires me to update my code (or ask my clients to add cafiles to their trust store
# [which some people don't know how to do]), I found a way to explicitly allow insecure connections (ie. without hostname
# verification) using urllib2.urlopen()
#
# This gist basically involves creating an ssl.SSLContext() with some options which disable hostname verification
# This allows you to, for instance, add a parameter to a function which disables hostname verification.
import ssl
import urllib2
import logging

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
logger.addHandler(logging.NullHandler)

def get_url(url, data=None, secure=True):
    try:
        context = ssl.create_default_context()
        if not secure:
            context.check_hostname = False
            context.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE
        ret = urllib2.urlopen(url, data=data, context=context)
        return ret
    except:
        logging.exception("Sorry, something went wrong retrieving url {}".format(url))
        raise

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # This will NOT verify the hostname
    get_url("https://google.com", secure=False)
    # This one will verify the hostname
    get_url("https://google.com")