How to download file from a page using python

Question

I am having troubles downloading txt file from this page: https://www.ceps.cz/en/all-data#RegulationEnergy (when you scroll down and see Download: txt, xls and xml).

My goal is to create scraper that will go to the linked page, clicks on the txt link for example and saves a downloaded file.

Main problems that I am not sure how to solve:

• The file doesn't have a real link that I can call and download it, but the link is created with JS based on filters and file type.

• When I use requests library for python and call the link with all headers it just redirects me to https://www.ceps.cz/en/all-data .

Approaches tried:

• Using scraper such as ParseHub to download link didn't work as intended. But this scraper was the closest to what I've wanted to get.

• Used requests library to connect to the link using headers that HXR request uses for downloading the file but it just redirects me to https://www.ceps.cz/en/all-data .

If you could propose some solution for this task, thank you in advance. :-)

Answer 1

You can download this data to a directory of your choice with Selenium; you just need to specify the directory to which the data will be saved. In what follows below, I'll save the txt data to my desktop:

from selenium import webdriver

download_dir = '/Users/doug/Desktop/'

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {'download.default_directory' : download_dir}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option('prefs', prefs)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
driver.get('https://www.ceps.cz/en/all-data')

container = driver.find_element_by_class_name('download-graph-data')
button = container.find_element_by_tag_name('li')
button.click()