Question

I am testing my webpage software by sending requests from python to it. I am able to send requests, receive responses and parse the json. However, one option on the webpage is to download files. I send the download request and can confirm that the response headers contain what I expect (application/octet-stream and the appropriate filename) but the Content-Length is 0. If the length is 0, I assume the file was not actually sent. I am able to download files from other means so I know my software works but I am having trouble with getting it to work with python.

I build up the request then do:

f = urllib.request.urlopen(request)
f.body = f.read()

I expect data to be in f.body but it is empty (I see “b””)

Is there a different way to access the file contents from an attachment in python?

Answer 1

Turns out I needed to throw some data into the file in order to have something in the body. I should’ve noticed this much sooner.