Download file as string in python

The following example works.

from urllib.request import urlopen

url = 'http://winterolympicsmedals.com/medals.csv'
output = urlopen(url).read()
print(output.decode('utf-8'))

Alternatively, you could use requests which provides a more human readable syntax. Keep in mind that requests requires that you install additional dependencies, which may increase the complexity of deploying the application, depending on your production enviornment.

import requests

url = 'http://winterolympicsmedals.com/medals.csv'
output = requests.get(url).text
print(output)

In Python3.x, using package 'urllib' like this:

from urllib.request import urlopen

data = urlopen('http://www.google.com').read() #bytes
body = data.decode('utf-8')