Python urllib urlretrieve behind proxy

Question

I looked into the documentation of urllib but all I could find on proxies was related to urlopen. However, I want to download a PDF from a given URL and store it locally but

Answer 1

You've got the right idea you're just missing a few things.

proxy = urllib2.ProxyHandler({'http': '127.0.0.1'})
opener = urllib2.build_opener(proxy)
urllib2.install_opener(opener)
urllib2.urlopen('http://www.google.com')

Answer 2

I beleive you can do something like this:

import urllib2

proxy = urllib2.ProxyHandler({'http': '123.96.220.2:81'})
opener = urllib2.build_opener(proxy)
urllib2.install_opener(opener)

with open('filename','wb') as f:
    f.write(urllib2.urlopen(URL).read())
    f.close()

since urllib2 doesnt have urlretrieve you can just use urlopen to get the same effect

you must have got the docs confused becuase urllib2 also doesnt have FancyURLopener thats why youre getting the error

urllib2 is much better when handling proxies and such

for more info look here Urllib2 Docs