Download A File Using Cygwin and wget

Written by David Walsh on Friday, August 8, 2008


Using Cygwin’s cURL package isn’t the only way to download a file. You can also use Cygwin’s wget command to download any URL.

The Bash Script

wget http://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!


Follow via RSS Epic Discussion

Commenter Avatar August 08 / #
Mark says:

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

Commenter Avatar August 08 / #
xpix says:

Why would you use something like that to download a page?

Commenter Avatar August 08 / #
Mark says:

@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 peices.

Another example, you can use it to interact with almost all of Google’s services.

wget –post-file template_entry.xml –header “Authorization: GoogleLogin auth=ABCDEFG” –header “Content-Type: application/atom+xml” “http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/brad.gushue”");

The above code would post a new album to your picasa web albums.

The possibilities are limitless.

Commenter Avatar August 08 / #
Not Me says:

So what does Cygwin have to do with any of these posts?

David Walsh August 08 / #
david says:

@Anon: I use Cygwin on my Windows computer. Obviously, you don’t need Cygwin if you run Linux.

Commenter Avatar August 08 / #
Not Me says:

Or the Mac OS, or any flavor of Unix, or ….

Commenter Avatar August 11 / #
xpix says:

Thanks for the answer Mark.

I am building quite simple application and I never felt the need to to do any of that.

Commenter Avatar June 08 / #
iGuide says:

I’ve used both wget and curl for downloading jobs, never found any difference between the two.

Commenter Avatar February 04 / #
TeMc says:

@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

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