download - downloading an excel file from the web in python

Question

I have the following web address:

dls = "http://www.muellerindustries.com/uploads/pdf/UW SPD0114.xls"

I tried to download the file:

urllib2.urlopen(dls, "test.xls")

This made a file called "test.xls" but this is clearly an html file. If I opened the html file in firefox it opened an excel file, but if I opened the file in excel it was definitely not the excel file I was looking for.

If I have a web address like the one above, how do I make python download the excel file as an excel file?

Answer 1

I suggest using requests:

import requests
dls = "http://www.muellerindustries.com/uploads/pdf/UW SPD0114.xls"
resp = requests.get(dls)

output = open('test.xls', 'wb')
output.write(resp.content)
output.close()

To get requests installed:

pip install requests