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pythonmacossslssl-certificatenltk

SSL error downloading NLTK data

I am trying to download NLTK 3.0 for use with Python 3.6 on Mac OS X 10.7.5, but am getting an SSL error:

import nltk
nltk.download()

enter image description here

I downloaded NLTK with a pip3 command: sudo pip3 install -U nltk.

Changing the index in the NLTK downloader allows the downloader to show all of NLTK's files, but when one tries to download all, one gets another SSL error (see bottom of photo):

enter image description here

I am relatively new to computer science and am not at all savvy with respect to SSL.

My question is how to simply resolve this issue?

Here is a similar question by a user who is having the same problem:

Unable to download nltk data

I decided to post a new question with screenshots, since my edit to that other question was rejected.

Similar questions which I did not find helpful:

NLTK download SSL: Certificate verify failed

downloading error using nltk.download()

Solution

  • You don't need to disable SSL checking if you run the following terminal command:

    /Applications/Python 3.6/Install Certificates.command

    In the place of 3.6, put your version of Python if it's an earlier one. Then you should be able to open your Python interpreter (using the command python3) and successfully run nltk.download() there.

    This is an issue wherein urllib uses an embedded version of OpenSSL that not in the system certificate store. Here's an answer with more information on what's going on.