How do I preserve the remote filename when Downloading a file using curl

Question

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How do I save a file using the response header filename with cURL

I need to download many thousands of images in the format

http://oregondigital.org/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/baseball&CISOPTR=0

If you paste that link in a browser, it tries to download a file named 1.jp2

I want to use curl to do the same. However, when I run

curl -I 'http://oregondigital.org/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/baseball&CISOPTR=0'

the filename is reported as 404.txt which you can download and see that it is actually the file I want. I can't use the -O option because the name assigned to the file is no good, and I have technical reasons for needing the actual name used on the system.

How do I get curl to download the same file I have no trouble retrieving in my browser? Thanks.

my guess is that this is somehow related to the user-agent of the caller, though I just tried it adding chrome's UA and that didn't help. — Yevgeny Simkin, Sep 16 '11 at 23:57

score 221 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 29 '18 at 18:55

221

The solution is to use -O -J

-O, --remote-name          Write output to a file named as the remote file  
-J, --remote-header-name   Use the header-provided filename

So...

curl  -O -J  'http://oregondigital.org/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/baseball&CISOPTR=0'

I had to upgrade my CURL. I had v 7.19 which doesn't support -J but 7.22 (which is the latest) does.

edited Mar 29 '18 at 18:55

meetar

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answered Sep 17 '11 at 01:06

Yevgeny Simkin

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You can write `-OJ`. Or e.g. `-LOJR` if you combine with other options – smci Sep 10 '18 at 00:51
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As per [7.20.0 § curl - Changes](https://curl.se/changes.html#7_20_0), the `-J` or `--remote-header-name` option is added in 7.20.0 . – li ki Jul 04 '21 at 01:31
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Solely `--remote-name` is sufficient. – Alex Aug 05 '21 at 13:40
But keep in mind that it may don't work if the server uses UTF-8 in `Content-Disposition`. Because some cURL versions does not handle it correctly. At least curl 7.84.0 for macOS does not. – Rostyslav Druzhchenko Nov 02 '22 at 15:35
You may use `wget` as an alternative in this case. ```wget --content-disposition ``` – Rostyslav Druzhchenko Nov 02 '22 at 15:41

score -9 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '11 at 01:29

-9

You can use the -o option can you? eg

 curl  'http://oregondigital.org/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/baseball&CISOPTR=[0-9]' -o "#1.jpg"

answered Sep 17 '11 at 01:29

bash-o-logist

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he says right in his question that he can't use the -O because he doesn't want the file name to be showfile.exe?... etc. Pay Attention! :) – Yevgeny Simkin Sep 17 '11 at 01:42
the user can't define the file name in this case... it's coming from the header of the incoming response – Yevgeny Simkin Sep 17 '11 at 05:11
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-o lets you set a custom name and more importantly, a custom location for the downloaded file. -O automatically names the file, but also downloads it to the default location (my home folder in my case). So how would I combine the two, and choose where the file gets downloaded, but preserving the name from the server? – l008com Sep 03 '18 at 06:28

How do I preserve the remote filename when Downloading a file using curl

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