Incorrect output when downloading .html files

Question

I simply wish to download .html files in python. Code:

import urllib2 
    hdr = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
    urls=['http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211']
    path='C:/Users/sony/Desktop/Python'
    for i,site in enumerate(urls):
        print (site)
        req = urllib2.Request(site, headers=hdr)
        page = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor).open(req)
        page_content = page.read()
        with open(path+'/'+str(i)+'.html', 'w') as fid:
            fid.write(page_content)

But this gives this output sometimes https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16PrXUjs69zWFJvWmJ6aFhyN0k/view?usp=sharing which I don't get at all. I read this file using goose in python which shows nothing when I read such a file.

When it doesn't work: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211

@LutzHorn Please check now. Sry for not mentioning it before. — Abhishek Bhatia
– Abhishek Bhatia, Commented May 21, 2015 at 13:35

Padraic Cunningham · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-21 16:16:16Z

1

Use requests to do all the work for you using .content to let requests handle the encoding:

import requests

urls=['http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211']

 path='C:/Users/sony/Desktop/Python'

for i,site in enumerate(urls):
    print (site)
    req = requests.get(site)
    page_content = req.content
    with open ('{}{}.html'.format(path,i), 'w') as fid:
        fid.write(page_content)

Output:

 <!DOCTYPE html> <!--NEW--> <!--- www pageHead.vm ---> <!--- mode=www ---> <!--- URI=/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211 ---> <!--- Host=www.nydailynews.com ---> <!--[if IE 8]><html class="ie8" lang="en" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/"><![endif]--> <!--[if IE 9]><html class="ie9" lang="en" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/"><![endif]--> <!--[if IE 10]><html class="ie10" lang="en" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/"><![endif]--> <!--[if IE 11]><html class="ie11" lang="en" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/"><![endif]--> <!--[if !IE]><!--> <html lang="en" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/"> <!--<![endif]-->       <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>          <title>Fans stampede outside South African stadium - NY Daily News</title>     <meta name="nydn_section" content="Sports"/>   <meta name="viewport" content="width=1070, maximum-scale=1.0"/>  <meta property="fb:app_id" content="107464888913"/> <meta property="fb:admins" content="1594068001"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="NY Daily News"/> <meta property="article:publisher" content="https://www.facebook.com/thenewyorkdailynews"/> <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="02916AAC0DA8B068EFE01D721E03ED7E"/>    <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@nydailynews"> <meta property="twitter:url" content="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211"/> <meta property="twitter:title" content="Fans stampede outside South African stadium"/> <meta property="twitter:description" content="Thousands of fans stampeded outside the stadium gates of a World Cup warmup game Sunday, five days before the start of soccer's showcase event. Several fans could be seen falling under the crush of people, many wearing Nigeria jerseys."/> <meta id="og_title" property="og:title" content="Fans stampede outside South African stadium"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta id="og_url" property="og:url" content="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211"/>   <meta id="og_image" property="og:image" content="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.179213!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_1200/alg-stampede-johannesburg-jpg.jpg"/>   <meta id="og_description" property="og:description" content="Thousands of fans stampeded outside the stadium gates of a World Cup warmup game Sunday, five days before the start of soccer's showcase event. Several fans could be seen falling under the crush of people, many wearing Nigeria jerseys."/> <meta name="description" content="Thousands of fans stampeded outside the stadium gates of a World Cup warmup game Sunday, five days before the start of soccer's showcase event. Several fans could be seen falling under the crush of people, many wearing Nigeria jerseys."/>   <meta name="nydn_byline" content="MICHAEL LEWIS"/>   <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://assets.nydailynews.com/nydn/c/nydn.css?r=20120405mk1Bh">  <meta name="parsely-title" content="Fans stampede outside South African stadium"/> <meta name="parsely-link" content="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211"/> <meta name="parsely-type" content="article"/> <meta name="parsely-image-url" content="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.179213!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_1200/alg-stampede-johannesburg-jpg.jpg"/>    <meta name="parsely-pub-date" content="2010-06-06T15:01:04"/>   <meta name="parsely-section" content="Sports"/>   <meta name="parsely-author" content="Michael Lewis"/>       <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://assets.nydailynews.com/nydn/c/article.css?r=20120405mk1Bh">       <meta name="robots" content="NOARCHIVE"/>         <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211">  <link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="http://m.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211"> <link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://m.nydailynews.com/sports/soccer-fans-stampede-south-african-stadium-nigeria-north-korea-world-cup-warmup-article-1.179211"/>     <script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/nydn/js/nydn-pack-20140101.js?r=20120405mk1Bh"></script>   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/nydn/js/article2014.js?r=20120405mk1Bh"></script>          <!--[if lt IE 9]><script src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script><![endif]-->      


                              <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="NYDN Rss" href="http://feeds.nydailynews.com/nydnrss">              <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Sports Rss" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/nydnrss/sports">       

..........................

If you want to try the same url a few times you can use a try/except catching the requests.ConnectionError:

def tries(path, url, i, max_tries=1):
    for ty in range(1, max_tries+1):
        try:
            req = requests.get(url)
            page_content = req.content
            with open('{}{}.html'.format(path, i), 'w') as fid:
                fid.write(page_content)
            break
        except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError as e:
            print("Error {} for try {}".format(e, ty))


for ind, url in enumerate(urls):
    tries(path, url, ind, 4)

edited May 21, 2015 at 16:16

answered May 21, 2015 at 13:46

Padraic Cunningham

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17 Comments

Abhishek Bhatia Over a year ago

Since work on slow internet connection I face some timeout issues stackoverflow.com/questions/30373301/… . Do you think this will solve that as well? Or should I explictly specify a timeout in the above?

Abhishek Bhatia Over a year ago

Cunninghan there is some error with your code with open(path {}.html'.format(i), 'w') as fid: ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Padraic Cunningham Over a year ago

Yep. Missed an opening quote. Fixed. What do you want to happen if it times out?

Padraic Cunningham Over a year ago

Try it now. Working from phone so hard to see properly

Padraic Cunningham Over a year ago

Do you want to keep trying if that happens?

|

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:26:46Z

1

From looking at the response header:

>> print page.info()
Cache-Control: public, max-age=300, s-maxage=300
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Server: fs3
Age: 103
Expires: Thu, 21 May 2015 13:36:40 GMT
Content-Encoding: gzip
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: close
Vary: Accept-encoding, Accept-Encoding

I see the content is gzipped, try to use zlib module to decompress the data.

To check if the data is gzipped add the following line:

if page.info().get('Content-Encoding', '') == 'gzip':
    ... # decompress data

Please, read this to have an example of how to decompress the body.

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:26

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered May 21, 2015 at 13:35

boaz_shuster

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6 Comments

Abhishek Bhatia Over a year ago

@schelzz15 What solution do you suggest?

Abhishek Bhatia Over a year ago

@schelzz15 Two points- 1. Since I do this for many urls and this case is not present in all. Is there some possible way to check it 2. Can you provide a example please?

boaz_shuster Over a year ago

@AbhishekBhatia I have added an URL to an example of how to do that.

Abhishek Bhatia Over a year ago

Since all are not in gzip. I think there is should a check also. Can you specify how one can do that.

Colonel Thirty Two Over a year ago

I don't think http servers are supposed to send gzip-encoded data unless the client lists that they support it (and I don't think urllib2 does out-of-the-box).

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