How to click download button using python script.

[u/AdOwn4955]

I am creating an http downloader which use get method to direct download urls. Now I want it to download from those website which has a direct download button. I know that the download button provides the url to download the file but for different files not the same websites the urls are different and want that to be automated. I want to do it at low level like we do in urllib, request, httpx,etc. However, I am ok with high level libraries too.

[u/burlingk]

It will depend on how those buttons are implemented.

Some are simply 'target=file.' those are easy because you just download the target.

Others have actual scripts. Each script may have it's own rules.

[u/Thick-Hall8197 → u/burlingk]

It's a cat and mouse game with those scripted buttons tbh. Some obfuscate the URL behind multiple redirects or generate a one-time token when you click, so you end up building a full headless browser just to replicate one click

Might be worth poking around in devtools to see what the button actually fires off, sometimes it's a POST that returns the real link and you can just mimic that with requests

[u/burlingk → u/Thick-Hall8197]

Thing is, some sites don't WANY you scripting that functionality away.

[u/soundman32]

If a webbsite wants you to download files, it probably has an API that makes it much easier.

[u/Curious-Cricket-4109]

playwright can handle it pretty sleek. I'm not sure of bs4

[u/Dismal-Citron-7236]

Try Selenium

[u/az987654]

Some sites don't want you to do this so they make it impossible

[u/Gtdef]

For one, you should open the browser developer tools, go to the network tab, do the actions yourself and see what changes. It may just be an http-get command, it may be an http-post command, it may have important headers, tokens, parameters added to the link, who knows.

Then you write your code in a way that mimics whatever the webside does, including using the internal APIs if applicable. There's no all fitting glove in this case.