from urllib.request import urlopen


def read_file_from_url(url, return_type="list", encoding="utf-8"):
    """Reads a file from a URL.

    Args:
        url (str): The URL of the file.
        return_type (str, optional): The return type, can either be string or list. Defaults to "list".
        encoding (str, optional): The encoding of the file. Defaults to "utf-8".

    Raises:
        ValueError: The return type must be either list or string.

    Returns:
        str | list: The contents of the file.
    """

    if return_type == "list":
        return [line.decode(encoding).rstrip() for line in urlopen(url).readlines()]
    elif return_type == "string":
        return urlopen(url).read().decode(encoding)
    else:
        raise ValueError("The return type must be either list or string.")