Getting authentication for a website with python - url

Question

I am trying to get onto a website and download information using python. I know the downloading part of the code works.
However, the website requires authentication to get onto it - I am a member and I have a valid username and password.
I did some research and the following code should work - but it doesn't.
What am I missing?
Here is the code:
import urllib2
url = 'https://sample-website.com/'
username = '' #I've tried with leaving this empty and with putting in a valid username
password = '' # same as above
p = urllib2.HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm()
p.add_password(None, url, username, password)
handler = urllib2.HTTPBasicAuthHandler(p)
opener = urllib2.build_opener(handler)
urllib2.install_opener(opener)
page = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
The error I get is this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python27\smth_rand.py", line 14, in <module>
page = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 127, in urlopen
return _opener.open(url, data, timeout)
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 410, in open
response = meth(req, response)
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 523, in http_response
'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 448, in error
return self._call_chain(*args)
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 382, in _call_chain
result = func(*args)
File "C:\Python27\lib\urllib2.py", line 531, in http_error_default
raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)
HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized
Ideally my code would prompt for the user to enter his/her username and password but I'm not sure how to code that part either.
Thanks

Answer 1

So you need both urllib and urllib2 to do this. The example code would look like
import urllib, urllib2
import webbrowser
opener = urllib2.build_opener()
username = ''
password = ''
values = {
'username': 'example_username',
'password': 'example_password',
}
params = urllib.urlencode(values)
response = opener.open("https://sample-website.com/",params)
response.read()
your response.read() would give you w/e information you want to get out of it. You can look up all the specific methods for more in depth explanation.