HTTP Error 403 Forbidden - when downloading nltk data [duplicate]

Question

I am facing some problem for accessing nltk data. I have tried nltk.download(). The gui page has come with HTTP Error 403: Forbidden error. I have also try to install from command line which is provided here.

python -m nltk.downloader all

and get this error.

C:\Python36\lib\runpy.py:125: RuntimeWarning: 'nltk.downloader' found in sys.modules after import of package 'nltk', but prior to execution of 'nltk.downloader'; this may result in unpredictable behaviour warn(RuntimeWarning(msg)) [nltk_data] Error loading all: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden.

I also go through How do I download NLTK data? and Failed loading english.pickle with nltk.data.load.

Answer 1

The problem is coming from the nltk download server. If you look at the gui's config, it's pointing to this link

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nltk/nltk_data/gh-pages/index.xml

If you access this link in the browser, you get this as a message :

Error 403 Forbidden.

Forbidden.

Guru Mediation:

Details: cache-lcy1125-LCY 1501134862 2002107460

Varnish cache server

So, I was going to file an issue on github, but someone else already did that here : https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/1791

A workaround was suggested here: https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/1787.

Based on the discussion on github:

It seems like the Github is down/blocking access to the raw content on the repo.

The suggested workaround is to manually download as follows:

PATH_TO_NLTK_DATA=/home/username/nltk_data/
wget https://github.com/nltk/nltk_data/archive/gh-pages.zip
unzip gh-pages.zip
mv nltk_data-gh-pages/ $PATH_TO_NLTK_DATA

People also suggested using an laternative index as follows:

python -m nltk.downloader -u https://pastebin.com/raw/D3TBY4Mj punkt