Download large file in python with requests

With the following streaming code, the Python memory usage is restricted regardless of the size of the downloaded file:

def download_file(url):
    local_filename = url.split('/')[-1]
    # NOTE the stream=True parameter below
    with requests.get(url, stream=True) as r:
        r.raise_for_status()
        with open(local_filename, 'wb') as f:
            for chunk in r.iter_content(chunk_size=8192): 
                # If you have chunk encoded response uncomment if
                # and set chunk_size parameter to None.
                #if chunk: 
                f.write(chunk)
    return local_filename

Note that the number of bytes returned using iter_content is not exactly the chunk_size; it's expected to be a random number that is often far bigger, and is expected to be different in every iteration.

See body-content-workflow and Response.iter_content for further reference.

It's much easier if you use Response.raw and shutil.copyfileobj():

import requests
import shutil

def download_file(url):
    local_filename = url.split('/')[-1]
    with requests.get(url, stream=True) as r:
        with open(local_filename, 'wb') as f:
            shutil.copyfileobj(r.raw, f)

    return local_filename

This streams the file to disk without using excessive memory, and the code is simple.

Note: According to the documentation, Response.raw will not decode gzip and deflate transfer-encodings, so you will need to do this manually.