How do I download a file over HTTP using Python?

Answer #1:

Use urllib.request.urlopen():

import urllib.request
with urllib.request.urlopen('http://www.example.com/') as f:
    html = f.read().decode('utf-8')

This is the most basic way to use the library, minus any error handling. You can also do more complex stuff such as changing headers.

On Python 2, the method is in urllib2:

import urllib2
response = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.example.com/')
html = response.read()

Answer #2:

One more, using urlretrieve:

import urllib
urllib.urlretrieve ("http://www.example.com/songs/mp3.mp3", "mp3.mp3")

(for Python 3+ use import urllib.request and urllib.request.urlretrieve)

Yet another one, with a “progressbar”

import urllib2
url = "http://download.thinkbroadband.com/10MB.zip"
file_name = url.split('/')[-1]
u = urllib2.urlopen(url)
f = open(file_name, 'wb')
meta = u.info()
file_size = int(meta.getheaders("Content-Length")[0])
print "Downloading: %s Bytes: %s" % (file_name, file_size)
file_size_dl = 0
block_sz = 8192
while True:
    buffer = u.read(block_sz)
    if not buffer:
        break
    file_size_dl += len(buffer)
    f.write(buffer)
    status = r"%10d  [%3.2f%%]" % (file_size_dl, file_size_dl * 100. / file_size)
    status = status + chr(8)*(len(status)+1)
    print status,
f.close()

Answer #3:

In 2012, use the python requests library

>>> import requests
>>> 
>>> url = "http://download.thinkbroadband.com/10MB.zip"
>>> r = requests.get(url)
>>> print len(r.content)
10485760

You can run pip install requests to get it.

Requests has many advantages over the alternatives because the API is much simpler. This is especially true if you have to do authentication. urllib and urllib2 are pretty unintuitive and painful in this case.

2015-12-30

People have expressed admiration for the progress bar. It’s cool, sure. There are several off-the-shelf solutions now, including tqdm:

from tqdm import tqdm
import requests
url = "http://download.thinkbroadband.com/10MB.zip"
response = requests.get(url, stream=True)
with open("10MB", "wb") as handle:
    for data in tqdm(response.iter_content()):
        handle.write(data)

This is essentially the implementation @kvance described 30 months ago.

Answer #4:

import urllib2
mp3file = urllib2.urlopen("http://www.example.com/songs/mp3.mp3")
with open('test.mp3','wb') as output:
  output.write(mp3file.read())

The wb in open('test.mp3','wb') opens a file (and erases any existing file) in binary mode so you can save data with it instead of just text.

Answer #5:

Python 3

• urllib.request.urlopen

  import urllib.request
  response = urllib.request.urlopen('http://www.example.com/')
  html = response.read()
  

• urllib.request.urlretrieve

  import urllib.request
  urllib.request.urlretrieve('http://www.example.com/songs/mp3.mp3', 'mp3.mp3')
  

  Note: According to the documentation, urllib.request.urlretrieve is a “legacy interface” and “might become deprecated in the future” (thanks gerrit)

Python 2

• urllib2.urlopen (thanks Corey)

  import urllib2
  response = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.example.com/')
  html = response.read()
  

• urllib.urlretrieve (thanks PabloG)

  import urllib
  urllib.urlretrieve('http://www.example.com/songs/mp3.mp3', 'mp3.mp3')
  

Answer #6:

use wget module:

import wget
wget.download('url')

Answer #7:

import os,requests
def download(url):
    get_response = requests.get(url,stream=True)
    file_name  = url.split("/")[-1]
    with open(file_name, 'wb') as f:
        for chunk in get_response.iter_content(chunk_size=1024):
            if chunk: # filter out keep-alive new chunks
                f.write(chunk)
download("https://example.com/example.jpg")

Answer #8:

An improved version of the PabloG code for Python 2/3:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from __future__ import ( division, absolute_import, print_function, unicode_literals )
import sys, os, tempfile, logging
if sys.version_info >= (3,):
    import urllib.request as urllib2
    import urllib.parse as urlparse
else:
    import urllib2
    import urlparse
def download_file(url, dest=None):
    """
    Download and save a file specified by url to dest directory,
    """
    u = urllib2.urlopen(url)
    scheme, netloc, path, query, fragment = urlparse.urlsplit(url)
    filename = os.path.basename(path)
    if not filename:
        filename = 'downloaded.file'
    if dest:
        filename = os.path.join(dest, filename)
    with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
        meta = u.info()
        meta_func = meta.getheaders if hasattr(meta, 'getheaders') else meta.get_all
        meta_length = meta_func("Content-Length")
        file_size = None
        if meta_length:
            file_size = int(meta_length[0])
        print("Downloading: {0} Bytes: {1}".format(url, file_size))
        file_size_dl = 0
        block_sz = 8192
        while True:
            buffer = u.read(block_sz)
            if not buffer:
                break
            file_size_dl += len(buffer)
            f.write(buffer)
            status = "{0:16}".format(file_size_dl)
            if file_size:
                status += "   [{0:6.2f}%]".format(file_size_dl * 100 / file_size)
            status += chr(13)
            print(status, end="")
        print()
    return filename
if __name__ == "__main__":  # Only run if this file is called directly
    print("Testing with 10MB download")
    url = "http://download.thinkbroadband.com/10MB.zip"
    filename = download_file(url)
    print(filename)