Function like urllib.urlretrieve for downloading files

[matrixik]

Hello,

I would like to request function for downloading files.
Something like:
r = requests.get_file('https://example.com/big_file.zip', 'path_to_file')

I'm looking for it mainly for downloading big files (over 1GB), without fully loading them to memory.

Best regards

[kennethreitz]

You can write a file without loading it into memory currently:

r = requests.get('https://example.com/big_file.zip'', prefetch=False)

with open('file', 'w') as f:
    for chunk in r.iter_chunks():
            f.write(chunk)

[matrixik]

Nice to know but still I would prefer short one-liner over 4 lines.
P.S. You probably should update you example from requests.get_file to requests.get

[kennethreitz]

This isn't about lines of code — it's about concise, succinct code. There is little value and many disadvantages of having a library write to files directly on your behalf.

[matrixik]

Thank you for reply. I'll leave this to more experienced than me and use your code.

iter_chunks not exist, I need to use iter_lines or iter_content with big chunk_size

Best regards

[kennethreitz]

Sorry, I hadn't had any coffee yet :)

[amitt001]

For latest version(Edit: v2+) of requests:

r = requests.get('https://example.com/big_file.zip'', stream=True)

with open('file', 'wb') as f:
    for chunk in r.iter_content():
            f.write(chunk)

[Lukasa]

@amitt001 That should work in the current version v2.10.0, and indeed in all of the v2.X.X series release.