How to get my Python script to go to a URL, download the latest file

I have written this Python script to create a sheet with only the athletes from our sports club from the national rankings. At the moment I have to download the rankings file and then re-name it.

#import the writer
import xlwt
#import the reader
import xlrd
#open the rankings spreadsheet
book = xlrd.open_workbook('rankings.xls')
#open the first sheet
first_sheet = book.sheet_by_index(0)
#print the values in the second column of the first sheet
print first_sheet.col_values(1)


#open the spreadsheet
workbook = xlwt.Workbook()
#add a sheet named "Club BFA ranking"
worksheet1 = workbook.add_sheet("Club BFA ranking")
#in cell 0,0 (first cell of the first row) write "Ranking"
worksheet1.write(0, 0, "Ranking")
#in cell 0,1 (second cell of the first row) write "Name"
worksheet1.write(0, 1, "Name")    
#save and create the spreadsheet file
workbook.save("saxons.xls")

name = []
rank = []
for i in range(first_sheet.nrows):
    #print(first_sheet.cell_value(i,3)) 
    if('Saxon' in first_sheet.cell_value(i,3)):  
        name.append(first_sheet.cell_value(i,1))
        rank.append(first_sheet.cell_value(i,8))    
        print('a')
for j in range(len(name)):
    worksheet1.write(j+1,0,rank[j])
    worksheet1.write(j+1,1,name[j])


workbook.save("saxons.xls")

As a next iteration I would like it to go to a specific URL and download the latest spreadsheet to use as rankings.xls

How can I do that?

Solution

You could use the requests library. For example,

import requests

url = "YOUR_URL" 
downloaded_file = requests.get(url)

with open("YOUR_PATH/rankings.xls", 'wb') as file:  
    file.write(downloaded_file.content)

EDIT: You mentioned that you wanted to download the latest version of the file, you can use time as below to fill in the month & year.

time.strftime("https://www.britishfencing.com/wp-content/uploads/%Y/%m/ranking_file.xls")

as YOUR_URLto get the latest month's rankings.