How do I download a zip file in python using urllib2?

Question

Two part question. I am trying to download multiple archived Cory Doctorow podcasts from the internet archive. The old one's that do not come into my iTunes feed. I have written the script but the downloaded files are not properly formatted.

Q1 - What do I change to download the zip mp3 files? Q2 - What is a better way to pass the variables into URL?

 # and the base url.  def dlfile(file_name,file_mode,base_url):     from urllib2 import Request, urlopen, URLError, HTTPError      #create the url and the request     url = base_url + file_name + mid_url + file_name + end_url      req = Request(url)      # Open the url     try:         f = urlopen(req)         print "downloading " + url          # Open our local file for writing         local_file = open(file_name, "wb" + file_mode)         #Write to our local file         local_file.write(f.read())         local_file.close()      #handle errors     except HTTPError, e:         print "HTTP Error:",e.code , url     except URLError, e:         print "URL Error:",e.reason , url  # Set the range  var_range = range(150,153)  # Iterate over image ranges for index in var_range:      base_url = 'http://www.archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_'     mid_url = '/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_'     end_url = '_64kb_mp3.zip'     #create file name based on known pattern     file_name =  str(index)      dlfile(file_name,"wb",base_url 

This script was adapted from here

Answer 1

Here's how I'd deal with the url building and downloading. I'm making sure to name the file as the basename of the url (the last bit after the trailing slash) and I'm also using the with clause for opening the file to write to. This uses a ContextManager which is nice because it will close that file when the block exits. In addition, I use a template to build the string for the url. urlopen doesn't need a request object, just a string.

import os from urllib2 import urlopen, URLError, HTTPError   def dlfile(url):     # Open the url     try:         f = urlopen(url)         print "downloading " + url          # Open our local file for writing         with open(os.path.basename(url), "wb") as local_file:             local_file.write(f.read())      #handle errors     except HTTPError, e:         print "HTTP Error:", e.code, url     except URLError, e:         print "URL Error:", e.reason, url   def main():     # Iterate over image ranges     for index in range(150, 151):         url = ("http://www.archive.org/download/"                "Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_%d/"                "Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_%d_64kb_mp3.zip" %                (index, index))         dlfile(url)  if __name__ == '__main__':     main() 

Answer 2

An older solution on SO along the lines of what you want:

• download a zip file to a local drive and extract all files to a destination folder using python 2.5

• Python and urllib