How can I read the contents of an URL with Python?

To answer your question:

import urllib

link = "http://www.somesite.com/details.pl?urn=2344"
f = urllib.urlopen(link)
myfile = f.read()
print(myfile)

You need to read(), not readline()

EDIT (2018-06-25): Since Python 3, the legacy urllib.urlopen() was replaced by urllib.request.urlopen() (see notes from https://docs.python.org/3/library/urllib.request.html#urllib.request.urlopen for details).

If you're using Python 3, see answers by Martin Thoma or i.n.n.m within this question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28040508/158111 (Python 2/3 compat) https://stackoverflow.com/a/45886824/158111 (Python 3)

Or, just get this library here: http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/ and seriously use it :)

import requests

link = "http://www.somesite.com/details.pl?urn=2344"
f = requests.get(link)
print(f.text)

For python3 users, to save time, use the following code,

from urllib.request import urlopen

link = "https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/user/basics.broadcasting.html"

f = urlopen(link)
myfile = f.read()
print(myfile)

I know there are different threads for error: Name Error: urlopen is not defined, but thought this might save time.