Python saving xml from webservice

Question

I'm using a webservice to get a certain xml file from it. It works fine with urllib2 I get the xml as fileobject. So I want to know what would be the fastest way to store that somewhere in memory or not even store just parse it.

I tried iterparse on that object and it takes too long unless I save it first in file, then iterparse takes much less time.

So now I'm using this code to store it locally first and then do with that file what I want, and I would like to know is there a fastest way of doing it, fastest way of storing files.

url = "webservice"
s = urllib2.urlopen(url)

file = open("export.xml",'wb+')
for line in s:
    file.write(line)

Thanks

Answer 1

You don't need to write line-by-line. Just write the whole thing in one go:

>>> import urllib2
>>> url = "webservice"
>>> s = urllib2.urlopen(url)
>>> contents = s.read()
>>> file = open("export.xml", 'w')
>>> file.write(contents)
>>> file.close()

Answer 2

You can store it in a string:

content = s.read()

or a StringIO if you need file-like interface

content = cStringIO.StringIO()
content.write(s.read)