urllib.request for python 3.3 not working to download file
Question: I would like to download a large archive file with python and save it, but
urllib is not working for me. This is my code:

    
    
        import urllib
        urllib.request("http://www.petercollingridge.co.uk/sites/files/peter/particle_tutorial_7.txt")
    

Note that the link I used in this example is not a large archive. I am only
using it as an example. It links directly to a .txt file, so it should work. I
am getting this error:

    
    
        Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "<pyshell#11>", line 1, in <module>
        urllib.request("http://www.petercollingridge.co.uk/sites/files/peter/particle_tutorial_7.txt")
        AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'request'
    

It seems to me like urllib is somehow broken and missing the "request" method.
I am using Python 3.3. Should I be using another module or is it actually a
Python problem?


Answer: No, it is not broken. [The `urllib.request`
documentation](http://docs.python.org/3.3/library/urllib.request.html) is
pretty clear on how this works:

    
    
    import urllib.request
    req = urllib.request.urlopen('http://www.google.com')
    data = req.read()
    

**Edit:** If you need to write the file directly to disk rather than process
the data, use `urlretrieve`.

    
    
    urllib.request.urlretrieve('http://example.com/big.zip', 'file/on/disk.zip')
    

