Python: download a file from a clickable link that when clicked starts downloading

Question

I have a URL link that if I click on it, it will start downloading a file. The URL looks something like this:

http://somewebsite.com/download?f=someStrings

If I copy the URL and past it, in the URL bar of a web-browser it will start downloading as well.

How can I download the file using Python and preferably without using selenium.

It might be a matter of handling a redirect and/or setting correct request headers such as user agent. Could you share the real url? — COVFEFE-19, May 06 '20 at 04:24
@lone_ranger I know using requests how to read the content of a webpage, but how to download a file? — TJ1, May 06 '20 at 04:30
@COVFEFE-19, unfortunately, I cannot. But can you please point me to a reference? — TJ1, May 06 '20 at 04:31
What does it return if you do requests.get()? Take a look here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43020352/python-downloading-a-file-from-a-webpage-by-clicking-on-a-link — lone_ranger, May 06 '20 at 04:32
@lone_ranger it returns status 200. But I don't see any file downloaded. — TJ1, May 06 '20 at 04:41
you need to do something like import requests import json res = requests.get(url) print(res.json()) — lone_ranger, May 06 '20 at 20:51

Roshan · Answer 1 · 2020-05-06T05:29:30.900

You can download the file using the requests module:

import requests as rq
r = rq.get('http://somewebsite.com/download?f=someStrings', allow_redirects=True)
open('filename.extension', 'wb').write(r.content)

Some points to note:

Replace http://somewebsite.com/download?f=someStrings with your desired URL
Replace filename.extension with file name and its file extension.
You can also specify the path where you want to save it

Python: download a file from a clickable link that when clicked starts downloading

1 Answers1

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