Download file using partial download (HTTP)

Question

Is there a way to download huge and still growing file over HTTP using the partial-download feature?

It seems that this code downloads file from scratch every time i

Answer 1

It is possible to do partial download using the range header, the following will request a selected range of bytes:

req = urllib2.Request('http://www.python.org/')
req.headers['Range'] = 'bytes=%s-%s' % (start, end)
f = urllib2.urlopen(req)

For example:

>>> req = urllib2.Request('http://www.python.org/')
>>> req.headers['Range'] = 'bytes=%s-%s' % (100, 150)
>>> f = urllib2.urlopen(req)
>>> f.read()
'l1-transitional.dtd">\n\n\n