requests: Exception messages

As a user I would like it to be easy to generate simple helpful messages upon an exception. A common way this is done in is to simply cast the exception to a string. However, with requests, the result is often something you don’t want to show an end user. For example:

    try:
        downloaded = requests.get(url)
    except (requests.Timeout) as err:
        print(str(err))

Results in the following message to the user:

    HTTPSConnectionPool(host='cal.example.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /ken/ken.ics/00832974-ffb3-42ea-ba3e-84ba3c0a30f6.ics (Caused by ConnectTimeoutError(<requests.packages.urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x7fd4644ef400>, 'Connection to cal.example.com timed out. (connect timeout=0.1)'))

There is useful information in this message, but it is not easily user accessible and is rather intimidating for end users. The information is probably available in the exception itself, but it is not clear how to get it. Also, it seems like accessing it would likely be different for each type of exception, which greatly increases the complexity of catching and reporting exceptions.

What I would expect is something like::

    Connection to cal.example.com timed out.

It would be very helpful if there were an easy way to generate user friendly error messages from requests exceptions. If there is such a way, I have not been able to find it. Thus, I suggest it be added to the otherwise excellent introduction to requests. If there is not such a way, I would like to to suggest that it be added.