using urllib with ftp?

[John Salerno]

I've tried this already and it seems to work, but I'm curious if it's
okay to use urllib when trying to access a url that begins with ftp://
instead of http://. Does this matter? It's only a text file, so it's not
really an FTP server I'm accessing, I don't think. I wasn't sure if
using ftplib would be overkill in this case, or if you even could use it
at all if you just want to get the page itself (the txt file).

Thanks.

[Fredrik Lundh]

John Salerno wrote:

I've tried this already and it seems to work, but I'm curious if it's
okay to use urllib when trying to access a url that begins with ftp://
instead of http://. Does this matter? It's only a text file, so it's not
really an FTP server I'm accessing, I don't think. I wasn't sure if
using ftplib would be overkill in this case, or if you even could use it
at all if you just want to get the page itself (the txt file).

from the urllib documentation:

Currently, only the following protocols are supported: HTTP,
(versions 0.9 and 1.0), Gopher (but not Gopher-+), FTP, and
local files.

</F>

[John Salerno]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

John Salerno wrote:

I've tried this already and it seems to work, but I'm curious if it's
okay to use urllib when trying to access a url that begins with ftp://
instead of http://. Does this matter? It's only a text file, so it's not
really an FTP server I'm accessing, I don't think. I wasn't sure if
using ftplib would be overkill in this case, or if you even could use it
at all if you just want to get the page itself (the txt file).

from the urllib documentation:

Currently, only the following protocols are supported: HTTP,
(versions 0.9 and 1.0), Gopher (but not Gopher-+), FTP, and
local files.

Thanks. So the ftp:// is something different than actually using ftplib
to connect to an FTP server, right? I've used both urllib and ftplib, so
I know what they do, I just was a little unclear about whether they can
sometimes do each other's work as well.

[Fredrik Lundh]

John Salerno wrote:

Thanks. So the ftp:// is something different than actually using ftplib
to connect to an FTP server, right? I've used both urllib and ftplib, so
I know what they do, I just was a little unclear about whether they can
sometimes do each other's work as well.

urllib uses ftplib under the hood, but all you can do is to fetch files or directory
listings.

</F>

[John Salerno]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:

John Salerno wrote:

Thanks. So the ftp:// is something different than actually using ftplib
to connect to an FTP server, right? I've used both urllib and ftplib, so
I know what they do, I just was a little unclear about whether they can
sometimes do each other's work as well.

urllib uses ftplib under the hood, but all you can do is to fetch files or directory
listings.

Thanks! That makes perfect sense now that I know that.