Downloading binary files from github using Wget in python

I am creating a program that grabs files from a GitHub repository, but raw.githubusercontent.com doesn’t work for binary files. If .ico files are not binary, then tell me how to download those.

I am using wget.download(), like this:

import wget
url = “ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/user/repository/branch/file”
wget.download(url)

Any suggestions?

If you add ?raw=true to the end of a file, it should work.

For example: the .ico for my homepage cannot be viewed in the browser.

# Original Link
https://github.com/hayesall/hayesall.github.io/blob/master/favicon.ico

# (1) Appended with `?raw=true`
https://github.com/hayesall/hayesall.github.io/blob/master/favicon.ico?raw=true

# (2) Going through githubusercontent
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hayesall/hayesall.github.io/master/favicon.ico

Option (1) or (2) may be downloaded with wget:

import wget
url = "https://github.com/hayesall/hayesall.github.io/blob/master/favicon.ico?raw=true"
wget.download(url)
100% [.......................] 1150 / 1150

Checking the downloaded file:

$ file favicon.ico
favicon.ico: MS Windows icon resource - 1 icon, 16x16, 32 bits/pixel

In Atom:

Version information:

$ wget --version
GNU Wget 1.19.4 built on linux-gnu.
$ pip freeze | grep "wget"
wget==3.2

If this still isn't working, maybe it's a problem with wget (its most recent update was in 2015). Here's an alternative solution using requests:

import shutil
import requests

url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hayesall/hayesall.github.io/master/favicon.ico"
req = requests.get(url, stream=True)

assert req.status_code == 200

with open("favicon.ico", "wb") as _fh:
    req.raw.decode_content = True
    shutil.copyfileobj(req.raw, _fh)