Using the cURL package isn't the only way to download a file. You can also use the wget command to download any URL.
wget https://davidwalsh.name/ -O davidwalsh.name.txt
I'm guessing that wget and cURL aren't the only ways to download a file, but these are two easy ways to do so.
Also, look forward to more posts featuring wget -- it has a plethora of uses!
My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...
Introduction For quite a long time now websites with the so called "parallax" effect have been really popular. In case you have not heard of this effect, it basically includes different layers of images that are moving in different directions or with different speed. This leads to a...
I was recently driven to create a MooTools plugin that would take an element and fade it to a min from a max for a given number of times. Here's the result of my Moo-foolery. The MooTools JavaScript Options of the class include: min: (defaults to .5) the...
Last week I covered a smooth, subtle MooTools effect called Kwicks. Another great MooTools creation is the Accordion, which acts like...wait for it...an accordion! Now I've never been a huge Weird Al fan so this is as close to playing an accordion as...
Ahh yes, wget and cURL are soon becoming my most used utilities. Very great programs.
It is a little trickier but you can also download flash videos on sites that allow you to buffer, like YouTube. I havn’t yet been able to download flash videos that only allow streaming, like hulu.
Using wget to Download Youtube Videos
Why would you use something like that to download a page?
@xpix,
You would use something like that to download a page for processing. Through a script.
For example if you wanted to automatically get the latest ISO of a Linux distro you could set up a cron job to check for updates every single day and download the latest version through wget.
You could use wget to download a stats page, run a regular expression and print out certain pieces.
Another example, you can use it to interact with almost all of Google’s services.
The above code would post a new album to your picasa web albums.
The possibilities are limitless.
So what does Cygwin have to do with any of these posts?
@Anon: I use Cygwin on my Windows computer. Obviously, you don’t need Cygwin if you run Linux.
Or the Mac OS, or any flavor of Unix, or ….
Thanks for the answer Mark.
I am building quite simple application and I never felt the need to to do any of that.
I’ve used both wget and curl for downloading jobs, never found any difference between the two.
@Not Me:
Not though that Mac OS X (atleast 10.5 Leopard, and maybe 10.6) does not support the wget command by default.
You have to install
* XCode Developer Tools (do not untick “UNIX” in the install) version 3.1.4 (for Leopard) or 3.2 (for Snow Leopard)
* MacPorts 1.8.2 (as of writing) for Leopard and another version for Snow Leopard
* and then install the wget-command into that.
Tho the above will open a lot of possibilities, it’s not unfair to say that it’s a pain to do all that to get to 1 specific applicatoin :-(
(for allya Googlers:
– Get a free account at the Apple Developer Connection and download the xCode Developer Tools (if you’re using Leopard, you’ll notice the version on the ADC-site is by default 3.2 for Snow Leoaprd, read here ( http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-darwin-development/165766-xcode-leopard.html#post901636 ) to know how to get the old Leopard version
– Then http://macports.org/ should get you going towards MacPorts and http://wget.darwinports.com/
PS: DarwinPorts is the old name of MacPorts. Some tools still refer to DarwinPorts.
—
TeMc
If a URL forces you to download a CSV file, how do we use PHP to download that onto a folder in the sever?