Python 3 function to extract/unpack TAR archive file directly from web URL in one continous stream.

fetch_tar.py

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2018  Jan Chren (rindeal)
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only

import pathlib
import urllib
import shutil
import tarfile

def fetch_tar(url: str, dest_dir: pathlib.Path, clean_dest: bool = False, strip_components: int = 0):
    if clean_dest and dest_dir.exists():
        shutil.rmtree(dest_dir)
    if not dest_dir.exists():
        dest_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

    with urllib.request.urlopen(url) as resp:
		with tarfile.open(fileobj=resp, mode='r|*') as tar:
			for tarinfo in tar.next():
				if strip_components:
					tarinfo.name = pathlib.Path(*pathlib.Path(tarinfo.name).parts[strip_components:])

				tar.extract(tarinfo, path=dest_dir)

			# clean member cache to save on memory usage and processing time wasted on managing this list
    			tar.members = []