That’s it. But real PDF downloads can fail. Here’s the practical, copy-paste guide. import requests def download_pdf(url, filename): response = requests.get(url) response.raise_for_status() # Stop if error (404, 403, etc.)
Save as pdf_downloader.py , call with your URL and filename. Done. dead simple python pdf download
from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Chrome() driver.get("https://example.com/js-generated-pdf") pdf_url = driver.find_element("tag name", "embed").get_attribute("src") Download normally with requests import requests r = requests.get(pdf_url) with open("output.pdf", "wb") as f: f.write(r.content) That’s it
driver.quit() | Problem | Solution | |--------|----------| | 403 Forbidden | Add User-Agent header | | Slow download | Use stream=True with chunking | | PDF is actually HTML (login page) | Check response.headers['content-type'] — should be application/pdf | | HTTPS certificate error | verify=False (not recommended, but works) | | URL redirects | requests follows them automatically | import requests def download_pdf(url