Download a file using python from a webpage without opening the webpage

Question

I was looking for a way to write a script that will download a file from a specific website but without opening the website itself. I want everything to happen in the background.

The website is morningstar and a specific link for the example is this one: https://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=MSFT in this page, there is a "Button" (it is not really declared as a button but as a Hyperlink, the <a> tag in HTML)

I added a photo in the bottom so you can see for yourself exactly the way they wrote the code.

Anyway, I saw that when I clicked the button the href attribute actually calls a javascript function which then creates the links from which the file will be downloaded.

I am looking for a way that I can write a script and give it the link I want, for example, the link above, and the script will download this specific CSV file from that page into a folder of my choice.

I was looking at some selenium tutorials but I couldn't find much help for my specific problem.

Answer 1

Here's an example I use:

import requests

url = 'http://via.placeholder.com/350x150'

dashboardFile = requests.get(url, allow_redirects=True)

open('d:/dev/projects/new-wave/dashboard.pdf', 'wb').write(dashboardFile .content)

Oh, and depending on the size of the file you would want to download in chunks. A quick search of: "python download large file in chunks" will help.