How to define the basic HTTP authentication using cURL correctly?

From the documentation page: -u, –user <user:password> Specify the user name and password to use for server authentication. Overrides -n, –netrc and –netrc-optional. If you simply specify the user name, curl will prompt for a password. The user name and passwords are split up on the first colon, which makes it impossible to use a … Read more

How to download a file over HTTP?

Use urllib.request.urlopen(): This is the most basic way to use the library, minus any error handling. You can also do more complex stuff such as changing headers. On Python 2, the method is in urllib2:

How to define the basic HTTP authentication using cURL correctly?

From the documentation page: -u, –user <user:password> Specify the user name and password to use for server authentication. Overrides -n, –netrc and –netrc-optional. If you simply specify the user name, curl will prompt for a password. The user name and passwords are split up on the first colon, which makes it impossible to use a … Read more

How to download a file over HTTP?

Use urllib.request.urlopen(): This is the most basic way to use the library, minus any error handling. You can also do more complex stuff such as changing headers. On Python 2, the method is in urllib2:

application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data?

TL;DR Summary; if you have binary (non-alphanumeric) data (or a significantly sized payload) to transmit, use multipart/form-data. Otherwise, use application/x-www-form-urlencoded. The MIME types you mention are the two Content-Type headers for HTTP POST requests that user-agents (browsers) must support. The purpose of both of those types of requests is to send a list of name/value … Read more