How do I download a file over HTTP using Python?

Question

I have a small utility that I use to download an MP3 file from a website on a schedule and then builds/updates a podcast XML file which I\'ve added to iTunes.

The te

Answer 1

Following are the most commonly used calls for downloading files in python:

1. urllib.urlretrieve ('url_to_file', file_name)

2. urllib2.urlopen('url_to_file')

3. requests.get(url)

4. wget.download('url', file_name)

Note: urlopen and urlretrieve are found to perform relatively bad with downloading large files (size > 500 MB). requests.get stores the file in-memory until download is complete.