url - python,not getting full response

Question

when I want to get the page using urllib2, I don't get the full page.

here is the code in python:

import urllib2
import urllib
import socket
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
# define the frequency for http requests
socket.setdefaulttimeout(5)

    # getting the page
def get_page(url):
    """ loads a webpage into a string """
    src = ''

    req = urllib2.Request(url)

    try:
        response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
        src = response.read()
        response.close()
    except IOError:
        print 'can't open',url 
        return src

    return src

def write_to_file(soup):
    ''' i know that I should use try and catch'''
    # writing to file, you can check if you got the full page
    file = open('output','w')
    file.write(str(soup))
    file.close()



if __name__ == "__main__":
            # this is the page that I'm trying to get
    url = 'http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/'
    src = get_page(url)

    soup = BeautifulSoup(src)

    write_to_file(soup)    # open the file and see what you get
    print "end"

I have struggling to find the problem the whole week !! why I don't get the full page?

thanks for help

Answer 1

You might have to call read multiple times, as long as it does not return an empty string indicating EOF:

def get_page(url):
    """ loads a webpage into a string """
    src = ''

    req = urllib2.Request(url)

    try:
        response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
        chunk = True
        while chunk:
            chunk = response.read(1024)
            src += chunk
        response.close()
    except IOError:
        print 'can't open',url 
        return src

    return src