How to download a file into a directory using curl or wget?

Question

I know I can use the following 2 commands to download a file:

curl -O example.com/file.zip
wget example.com/file.zip

But I want them to go into a specific directory. So I can do the following:

curl -o mydir/file.zip example.com/file.zip
wget -O mydir/file.zip example.com/file.zip

Is there a way to not have to specify the filename? Something like this:

curl -dir mydir example.com/file.zip

score 57 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 20 '15 at 17:42

57

The following line will download all the files to a directory mentioned by you.

wget -P /home/test www.xyz.com

Here the files will be downloaded to /home/test directory

edited Nov 20 '15 at 17:42

Vy Do

46,709
59
215
313

answered Oct 31 '13 at 17:31

Kishan

49
3
11

Worked for me too! I also needed the options ; --user user --password pass . – AnneTheAgile Jul 23 '14 at 21:35
1

If you are currently in a dir, say the Documents dir. With path Documents/home/test, the hyphen before "home" must be removed for wget to function. – Matt Perejda Oct 27 '14 at 19:44
3

How can I do the same behavior with `curl`? – Victor Bocharsky Dec 07 '16 at 09:33

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 19 '16 at 21:41

17

I know this is an old question but it is possible to do what you ask with curl

rm directory/somefile.zip
rmdir directory
mkdir directory
curl --http1.1 http://example.com/somefile.zip --output directory/somefile.zip

first off if this was scripted you would need to make sure the file if it already exist is deleted then delete the directory then curl the download otherwise curl will fail with a file and directory already exist error.

answered Jun 19 '16 at 21:41

mewasthere

179
1
2

1

This is exactly what was aleeady in the question. The question was for selecting a directoriy but keeping the file name. – Jonas Eberle Oct 24 '20 at 13:23

Basile Starynkevitch · Answer 3 · 2016-01-02T03:02:46.083

7

The simplest way is to cd inside a subshell

  (cd somedir; wget example.com/file.zip)

and you could make that a shell function (e.g. in your ~/.bashrc)

  wgetinside() {
    ( cd $1 ; shift; wget $* )
  }

then type wgetinside somedir http://example.com/file.zip

edited Jan 02 '16 at 03:02

answered Oct 17 '13 at 05:00

Basile Starynkevitch

223,805
18
296
547

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 17 '13 at 02:02

3

Short answer is no as curl and wget automatically writes to STDOUT. It does not have an option built into to place the download file into a directory.

-o/--output <file> Write output to <file> instead of stdout (Curl)

-O,  --output-document=FILE    write documents to FILE. (WGet)

But as it outputs to STDOUT natively it does give you programatic solutions such as the following:

 i="YOURURL"; f=$(awk -F'/' '{print $NF}' <<< $i);curl $i > ~/$f

The first i will define your url (example.com/file.zip) as a variable. The f= part removed the URL and leaves /file.zip and then you curl that file ($i) to the directory (~) as the file name.

answered Oct 17 '13 at 02:02

MattSizzle

3,145
1
22
42

1

You could use `basename` instead of your `awk` trick. `basename` is working on URLs (because it uses the last `/`) – Basile Starynkevitch Oct 17 '13 at 05:06
Documentation for -o says: >> The file will be saved in the current working directory. If you want the file saved in a different directory, make sure you change the current working directory before invoking curl with this option. – Meglio Dec 01 '17 at 11:03

How to download a file into a directory using curl or wget?

4 Answers4