Using urllib2 in Python. How do I get the name of the file I am downloading?
Solution 1
The filename is usually included by the server through the content-disposition header:
content-disposition: attachment; filename=foo.pdf
You have access to the headers through
result = urllib2.urlopen(...)
result.info() <- contains the headers
i>>> import urllib2
ur>>> result = urllib2.urlopen('http://zopyx.com')
>>> print result
<addinfourl at 4302289808 whose fp = <socket._fileobject object at 0x1006dd5d0>>
>>> result.info()
<httplib.HTTPMessage instance at 0x1006fbab8>
>>> result.info().headers
['Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:08:28 GMT\r\n', 'Server: Zope/(unreleased version, python 2.4.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1 Plone/3.3.4\r\n', 'Content-Length: 15321\r\n', 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n', 'Via: 1.1 www.zopyx.com\r\n', 'Cache-Control: max-age=3600\r\n', 'Expires: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 03:08:28 GMT\r\n', 'Connection: close\r\n']
See
http://docs.python.org/library/urllib2.html
But be aware that this header does not need to be present. Otherwise you need to generate a reasonable name yourself from the URL requested - e.g. from the last component of the URI. Use the urlparse() method of Python in this case.
Solution 2
My issue with the previous answers is that they were using the original URL, and that would fail in the case of a redirect. Here's how I do it: (note the use of result.url
instead of url
)
import os
import urllib2
result = urllib2.urlopen(url)
filename = os.path.basename(urllib2.urlparse.urlparse(result.url).path)
Danny
Updated on June 04, 2022Comments
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Danny almost 2 years
I am a python beginner. I am using urllib2 to download files. When I download a file, I specify a filename to with which to save the downloaded file on my hard drive. However, if I download the file using my browser, a default filename is automatically provided.
Here is a simplified version of my code:
def downloadmp3(url): webFile = urllib2.urlopen(url) filename = 'temp.zip' localFile = open(filename, 'w') localFile.write(webFile.read())
The file downloads just fine, but if I type the string stored in the variable "url" into my browser, there is a default filename given to the file when I download it. I want to use this filename for my downloaded file not 'temp.zip' or whatever I assign it.
How do I use urllib2 (or some other Python library) to save the file with the filename that the server I am downloading from intends it to have?
If anyone doesn't understand this question, please say so, so that I can try to make it clearer.