I have extensive experience with PHP cURL but for the last few months I've been coding primarily in Java, utilizing the HttpClient library.
My new project requires me to use Python, once again putting me at the crossroads of seemingly comparable libraries: pycurl and urllib2.
Putting aside my previous experience with PHP cURL, what is the recommended library in Python? Is there a reason to use one but not the other? Which is the more popular option?
urllib2 is part of the standard library, pycurl isn't (so it requires a separate step of download/install/package etc).  That alone, quite apart from any difference in intrinsic quality, is guaranteed to make urllib2 more popular (and can be a pretty good pragmatical reason to pick it -- convenience!-).
Python: urllib2 or Pycurl?