urlgrabber is a pure python package that drastically simplifies the fetching of files. It is designed to be used in programs that need common (but not necessarily simple) url-fetching features. It is extremely simple to drop into an existing program and provides a clean interface to protocol-independant file-access. Best of all, urlgrabber takes care of all those pesky file-fetching details, and lets you focus on whatever it is that your program is written to do!