How do initial login/password before can download web file with urllib?

[Peter Hansen]

seberino at spawar.navy.mil wrote:
> I finally figured out how to use the wonderful module urllib to
> download files.
> 
> What if web page requires you to fill out a form with login and
> password first?
> 
> Is this just like any other FORM?  Can login/password from a GET method
> form be handled by appending something like "?login=foo,password=bar"
> to URL?
> 
> Is that right way?

If by "the URL" you mean the one that was used to retrieve the page in 
the first place, then the answer is "not necessarily, and rarely". 
Generally you need to parse the FORM and use its "action" attribute as 
the URL, plus whatever form fields are required.  It might be just login 
and password, but the choice of names is form-specific and there may be 
other (even hidden) fields that are required.  Tools such as 
http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ can help you with this.

-Peter