pooch.HTTPDownloader

class pooch.HTTPDownloader(progressbar=False, chunk_size=1024, **kwargs)

Download manager for fetching files over HTTP/HTTPS.

When called, downloads the given file URL into the specified local file. Uses the requests library to manage downloads.

Use with pooch.Pooch.fetch to customize the download of files (for example, to use authentication or print a progress bar).

Parameters

• progressbar (bool) – If True, will print a progress bar of the download to standard error (stderr). Requires tqdm to be installed.

• chunk_size (int) – Files are streamed chunk_size bytes at a time instead of loading everything into memory at one. Usually doesn’t need to be changed.

• **kwargs – All keyword arguments given when creating an instance of this class will be passed to requests.get.

Examples

Download one of the data files from the Pooch repository:

>>> import os
>>> from pooch import version, check_version
>>> url = "https://github.com/fatiando/pooch/raw/{}/data/tiny-data.txt"
>>> url = url.format(check_version(version.full_version))
>>> downloader = HTTPDownloader()
>>> # Not using with Pooch.fetch so no need to pass an instance of Pooch
>>> downloader(url=url, output_file="tiny-data.txt", pooch=None)
>>> os.path.exists("tiny-data.txt")
True
>>> with open("tiny-data.txt") as f:
...     print(f.read().strip())
# A tiny data file for test purposes only
1  2  3  4  5  6
>>> os.remove("tiny-data.txt")

Authentication can be handled by passing a user name and password to requests.get. All arguments provided when creating an instance of the class are forwarded to requests.get. We’ll use auth=(username, password) to use basic HTTPS authentication. The https://httpbin.org website allows us to make a fake a login request using whatever username and password we provide to it:

>>> user = "doggo"
>>> password = "goodboy"
>>> # httpbin will ask for the user and password we provide in the URL
>>> url = "https://httpbin.org/basic-auth/{}/{}".format(user, password)
>>> # Trying without the login credentials causes an error
>>> downloader = HTTPDownloader()
>>> try:
...     downloader(url=url, output_file="tiny-data.txt", pooch=None)
... except Exception:
...     print("There was an error!")
There was an error!
>>> # Pass in the credentials to HTTPDownloader
>>> downloader = HTTPDownloader(auth=(user, password))
>>> downloader(url=url, output_file="tiny-data.txt", pooch=None)
>>> with open("tiny-data.txt") as f:
...     for line in f:
...         print(line.rstrip())
{
  "authenticated": true,
  "user": "doggo"
}
>>> os.remove("tiny-data.txt")

Methods Summary

HTTPDownloader.__call__(url, output_file, pooch)

Download the given URL over HTTP to the given output file.

---

HTTPDownloader.__call__(url, output_file, pooch)

Download the given URL over HTTP to the given output file.

Uses requests.get.

Parameters

• url (str) – The URL to the file you want to download.

• output_file (str or file-like object) – Path (and file name) to which the file will be downloaded.

• pooch (Pooch) – The instance of Pooch that is calling this method.