[Tutor] Please help!!

[Kent Johnson]

MATATA EMMANUEL wrote:
> Alan,
> 
> Man!  I was thinking that it was simple. This is a little bit hard but 
> will try to make sense of it as I can.

How would you fetch the shapefile with your browser? Is there a url to 
download the file? It's pretty simple to fetch a web page or other 
resource from a URL and save it to a local file. urllib.urlretrieve() 
will do it.

If you have to authenticate (login) to the web site it gets a little 
more complex. urllib2 is similar to urllib but it has more options and 
supports authentication. There is a tutorial for urllib2 here:
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/urllib2.shtml

Kent

> 
> Thank you for your assistance. I'm glad you're up there to assist.
> 
> Matt
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     From:  /"Alan Gauld" <alan.gauld at freenet.co.uk>/
>     To:  /"MATATA EMMANUEL" <emmatata at hotmail.com>/
>     CC:  /<tutor at python.org>/
>     Subject:  /Re: [Tutor] Please help!!/
>     Date:  /Sat, 20 May 2006 17:58:20 +0100/
>      >[CCing back to list]
>      >
>      >>I know HTML even if I haven't used it for sometimes. I Also know
>      >>couple other programming languages (Visual basic, some C++).
>      >>I just taken a Python course of writting Python scripts for ArcGIS
>      >>so that if you sent me a script, I will be able to understand it.
>      >
>      >OK, now we know the background we know where to pitch the reply.
>      >I don't have a script that will do exactly what you want but someone
>      >else posted a snippet showing how to use urllib.
>      >
>      >If you need to parse the html that you read from urllib then you
>      >might
>      >find BeautifulSoup worth a look.
>      >
>      >http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/
>      >
>      >It makes extracting elements from html fairly painless.
>      >
>      >But if its easy to find a simple search of the string for the img
>      >tag
>      >may suffice.
>      >
>      >HTH,
>      >
>      >Alan Gauld
>      >Author of the Learn to Program web site
>      >http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld
>      >
>      >>
>      >>  From:  "Alan Gauld" <alan.gauld at freenet.co.uk>
>      >>  To:  "MATATA EMMANUEL" <emmatata at hotmail.com>,<Tutor at python.org>
>      >>  Subject:  Re: [Tutor] Please help!!
>      >>  Date:  Sat, 20 May 2006 13:15:41 +0100
>      >>  >>I'm tasked to write a Paython script which is supposed to hit a
>      >>web >>site and download a shapefile from that web site.
>      >>  >
>      >>  >The urllib module should do that for you but...
>      >>  >
>      >>  >>I don't have any clue and would like your help.
>      >>  >
>      >>  >What do you know?
>      >>  >Do you understand HTML? and specifically how to create and read
>      >>img >tags?
>      >>  >
>      >>  >Do you know any Python? Do you know any other programming
>      >>language?
>      >>  >
>      >>  >>I use 9.x if this matter.
>      >>  >
>      >>  >Version 9.x of what?
>      >>  >Operating System - on a Mac perhaps?
>      >>  >If so it shouldn't matter since Python's urllib works OK on the  
>      >> >older versions.
>      >>  >
>      >>  >We really need a liittle more background to help further.
>      >>  >
>      >>  >HTH,
>      >>  >
>      >>  >Alan G.
>      >>  >
>      >>
>      >
>      >
> 
> 
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