Python - HTTP Data Download

We can download data from a serer using python's module which handle ftp or File Transfer Protocol. We can also read the data and later save it to the local system.

We need to install the module ftplib to acheive this. pip install ftplib Fetching the Files We can fetch a specific file by using the getfile method. This method moves a copy of the file from the remote system to the local system from where the ftp connection was initiated. import ftplib import sys def getFile(ftp, filename): try: ftp.retrbinary("RETR " + filename ,open(filename, 'wb').write) except: print "Error" ftp = ftplib.FTP("ftp.nluug.nl") ftp.login("anonymous", "ftplib-example-1") ftp.cwd('/pub/') change directory to /pub/ getFile(ftp,'README.nluug') ftp.quit() When we run the above program, we find the file README.nlug to be present in the local system from where the connection was initiated. Reading the Data In the below example we use the module urllib2 to read the required portion of the data which we can copy and save it to local system. When we run the above program, we get the following output − import urllib2 response = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python') html = response.read(200) print html When we run the above program, we get the following output −

pip install ftplib Fetching the Files We can fetch a specific file by using the getfile method. This method moves a copy of the file from the remote system to the local system from where the ftp connection was initiated. import ftplib import sys def getFile(ftp, filename): try: ftp.retrbinary("RETR " + filename ,open(filename, 'wb').write) except: print "Error" ftp = ftplib.FTP("ftp.nluug.nl") ftp.login("anonymous", "ftplib-example-1") ftp.cwd('/pub/') change directory to /pub/ getFile(ftp,'README.nluug') ftp.quit() When we run the above program, we find the file README.nlug to be present in the local system from where the connection was initiated. Reading the Data In the below example we use the module urllib2 to read the required portion of the data which we can copy and save it to local system. When we run the above program, we get the following output − import urllib2 response = urllib2.urlopen('http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python') html = response.read(200) print html When we run the above program, we get the following output −

We can fetch a specific file by using the getfile method. This method moves a copy of the file from the remote system to the local system from where the ftp connection was initiated.

When we run the above program, we find the file README.nlug to be present in the local system from where the connection was initiated.

In the below example we use the module urllib2 to read the required portion of the data which we can copy and save it to local system.

When we run the above program, we get the following output −

When we run the above program, we get the following output −