Search code examples
pythonpdfpython-requestsfilenames

How to get pdf filename with Python requests?

I'm using the Python requests library to get a PDF file from the web. This works fine, but I now also want the original filename. If I go to a PDF file in Firefox and click download it already has a filename defined to save the pdf. How do I get this filename?

For example:

import requests
r = requests.get('http://www.researchgate.net/profile/M_Gotic/publication/260197848_Mater_Sci_Eng_B47_%281997%29_33/links/0c9605301e48beda0f000000.pdf')
print r.headers['content-type']  # prints 'application/pdf'

I checked the r.headers for anything interesting, but there's no filename in there. I was actually hoping for something like r.filename..

Does anybody know how I can get the filename of a downloaded PDF file with the requests library?

Solution

  • It is specified in an http header content-disposition. So to extract the name you would do:

    import re
d = r.headers['content-disposition']
fname = re.findall("filename=(.+)", d)[0]

    Name extracted from the string via regular expression (re module).