Get file size using python-requests, while only getting the header

Question

I have looked at the requests documentation, but I can\'t seem to find anything. How do I only request the header, so I can assess filesize?

Answer 1

use requests.get(url, stream=True).headers['Content-length']

stream=True means when function returns, only the response header is downloaded, response body is not.

Both requests.get and request.head can get you headers but there's an advantage of using get

1. get is more flexible, if you want to download the response body after inspecting the length, you can start by simply access the content property or using an iterator which will download the content in chunks
2. "HEAD request SHOULD be identical to the information sent in response to a GET request." but its not always the case.

here is an example of getting the length of a MIT open course video

MitOpenCourseUrl = "http://www.archive.org/download/MIT6.006F11/MIT6_006F11_lec01_300k.mp4"
resHead = requests.head(MitOpenCourseUrl)
resGet = requests.get(MitOpenCourseUrl,stream=True)
resHead.headers['Content-length'] # output 169
resGet.headers['Content-length'] # output 121291539