You will likely want to use the Python with statement (introduced in PEP 343) and the built-in open() function:
# Python 2
import urllib2
import BeautifulSoup
# Python 3
# import urllib3
# from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
# Python 2.6+ and Python 3
with open('urls.txt','r') as url_file, open('output.txt', 'w') as output_file:
url_list = url_file.readlines()
for url_item in url_list:
# quote_page = 'https://www.example.com/post/1245'
quote_page = url_item
# rest of the code is here
# Python 2 and 3
output_file.write(quote_page)
output_file.write(url)
output_file.write(title)
output_file.write(description)
output_file.write(actors)
output_file.write(director)
output_file.write('\n')
In this instance, we:
open() file handles (url_file,output_file) to our input and output text files ('urls.txt','output.txt') at the same time (using 'r' for reading and 'w' for writing, respectively).
Use the with statement to close these files automatically after we are done fully processing our URLs. Normally, we would need to issue separate e.g. url_file.close() and output_file.close() commands (ex. at Step 5).
Put our URLs into a list (url_list = url_file.readlines()).
Loop through our URL list and write() the data we want to our output_file.
close() both of our files automatically (see Step 2).
Note that to simply add data to an existing output_file, you will probably wish to use 'a' (append mode) rather than 'w' (write mode). So e.g. open('output.txt', 'w') as output_file would become open('output.txt', 'a') as output_file. This is important because 'w' (write mode) will truncate the file if the file already exists (i.e. you will lose your original data).
