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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-16T17:05:22+00:00

Lets say there’s a file that lives at the github repo: https://github.com/someguy/brilliant/blob/master/somefile.txt I’m trying

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Lets say there’s a file that lives at the github repo:

https://github.com/someguy/brilliant/blob/master/somefile.txt

I’m trying to use requests to request this file, write the content of it to disk in the current working directory where it can be used later. Right now, I’m using the following code:

import requests
from os import getcwd

url = "https://github.com/someguy/brilliant/blob/master/somefile.txt"
directory = getcwd()
filename = directory + 'somefile.txt'
r = requests.get(url)

f = open(filename,'w')
f.write(r.content)

Undoubtedly ugly, and more importantly, not working. Instead of the expected text, I get:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--

Hello future GitHubber! I bet you're here to remove those nasty inline styles,
DRY up these templates and make 'em nice and re-usable, right?

Please, don't. https://github.com/styleguide/templates/2.0

-->
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    <title>Page not found &middot; GitHub</title>
    <style type="text/css" media="screen">
      body {
        background: #f1f1f1;
        font-family: "HelveticaNeue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
        text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
        margin: 0; }

      .container { margin: 50px auto 40px auto; width: 600px; text-align: center; }

      a { color: #4183c4; text-decoration: none; }
      a:visited { color: #4183c4 }
      a:hover { text-decoration: none; }

      h1 { letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 60px; font-size: 60px; font-weight: 100; margin: 0px; text-shadow: 0 1px 0 #fff; }
      p { color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); margin: 20px 0 40px; }

      ul { list-style: none; margin: 25px 0; padding: 0; }
      li { display: table-cell; font-weight: bold; width: 1%; }
      #error-suggestions { font-size: 14px; }
      #next-steps { margin: 25px 0 50px 0;}
      #next-steps li { display: block; width: 100%; text-align: center; padding: 5px 0; font-weight: normal; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); }
      #next-steps a { font-weight: bold; }
      .divider { border-top: 1px solid #d5d5d5; border-bottom: 1px solid #fafafa;}

      #parallax_wrapper {
        position: relative;
        z-index: 0;
      }
      #parallax_field {
        overflow: hidden;
        position: absolute;
        left: 0;
        top: 0;
        height: 370px;
        width: 100%;
      }

etc etc.

Content from Github, but not the content of the file. What am I doing wrong?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The content of the file in question is included in the returned data. You are getting the full GitHub view of that file, not just the contents.

    If you want to download just the file, you need to use the Raw link at the top of the page, which will be (for your example):

    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/someguy/brilliant/master/somefile.txt

    Note the change in domain name, and the blob/ part of the path is gone.

    To demonstrate this with the requests GitHub repository itself:

    >>> import requests
>>> r = requests.get('https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/blob/master/README.rst')
>>> 'Requests:' in r.text
True
>>> r.headers['Content-Type']
'text/html; charset=utf-8'
>>> r = requests.get('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kennethreitz/requests/master/README.rst')
>>> 'Requests:' in r.text
True
>>> r.headers['Content-Type']
'text/plain; charset=utf-8'
>>> print r.text
Requests: HTTP for Humans
=========================


.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/kennethreitz/requests.png?branch=master
[... etc. ...]
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