Saving a file with an URL as the name of the file using Python on Windows

Question

I am having trouble with saving a file using Python on windows.

Here's the URL variable that stores the URL:

my_url = "https://example.com/some-page"

I want to remove the "https:" part and all the "/" from this string. This is what I tried:

filename = my_url.replace('https://', '')
filename = filename.replace('http://', '')
filename = filename.replace('/', '|') + ".txt"

I want to remove these characters as windows doesn't allow : and / characters as a file name.

The error that I am getting is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "123.py", line 28, in <module>
    f = open(filename, "w")
OSError: [Errno 22] Invalid argument: 'example.com|some-page.txt'

I want to do this with multiple URLs so even though the actual link uses https I tried to remove the http too.

But it also doesn't allow | in the file name so you'll need a different replacement character. — roganjosh
– roganjosh, Commented Jan 1, 2018 at 16:02

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

There is a function in urllib called urllib.parse.quote which removes special characters from urls and replaces them with their equivalent percent encoding.

urllib.parse.quote(string, safe='/', encoding=None, errors=None)

Replace special characters in string using the %xx escape. Letters, digits, and the characters '_.-' are never quoted. By default, this function is intended for quoting the path section of URL. The optional safe parameter specifies additional ASCII characters that should not be quoted — its default value is '/'.

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 1, 2018 at 16:15

dangee1705

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nnnmmm · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-01 16:01:25Z

1

The pipe character ("|") is not allowed in Windows filenames either. Source: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx

answered Jan 1, 2018 at 16:01

nnnmmm

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wished · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-01 16:03:49Z

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I managed to solve the problem :)

Here's what I did:

filename = my_url.replace('https://', '')
filename = filename.replace('http://', '')
filename = filename.replace('.', '_')
filename = filename.replace('-', '_')
filename = filename.replace('/', '_') + ".txt"

Thank you!

answered Jan 1, 2018 at 16:03

wished

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1 Comment

sepp2k Over a year ago

No need to replace - and .. Those are allowed.

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