Mac OS X: Terminal Download File Command

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I often need to download files using the Terminal. However, I am unable to find the wget command on OS X. How do download files from the web via the Mac OS X bash command line option?

You need to use a tool (command) called curl. It is a tool to transfer data from or to a server, using one of the following supported protocols

  1. FTP
  2. HTTP
  3. HTTPS
  4. FTPS
  5. POP3
  6. SFTP
  7. SMTPS
  8. SMTP and more.

This command is designed to work without user interaction.

curl command syntax

The syntax is:

curl 'url'
curl [option] 'url'
curl -O 'url'
curl -L -O 'url'
curl -o output.file.name.here 'url-here'
curl -o foo.pdf 'http://server1.cyberciti.biz/foo.pdf'

Examples

Open the Terminal and then type the following command to grab “Mastering vim” in pdf format from www.cyberciti.biz server:

curl -o mastering-vim.pdf 'http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/mastering-vi-vim.pdf'

Sample outputs:

Fig.01: curl command in action
Fig.01: curl command in action

The -o option write output to a file called mastering-vim.pdf instead of screen. You can skip the -o option and use the -O (capital letter O) to write (save) output to a local file named like the remote file we get. Only the file part of the remote file is used, the path is cut off:

curl -O http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/mastering-vi-vim.pdf
ls -l *.pdf

How do I specify multiple URLs or parts of URLs?

The syntax is:

# grab files from server1.cyberciti.biz, server2.cyberciti.biz, server3.cyberciti.biz
curl -O http://server{1,2,3}.cyberciti.biz/
curl -O http://server{1,2,3}.cyberciti.biz/foo.pdf
## grab latest reports from US, UK, India FTP servers ##
curl -O ftp://intranet.site.{us,uk,in}.lic.net.in/reports/latest[a-z].tar.gz

You can get sequences of alphanumeric series by using []. In this example, grab invoices-1.pdf, invoices-2.pdf, …, invoices-1000.pdf using curl command:

curl -O ftp://ftp.cyberciti.biz/invoices-[1-1000].pdf

You can grab urls with leading zeros as follows:

curl -O ftp://ftp.cyberciti.biz/images-[001-300].png

You can combine various techniques to build complex download url structure as follows:

curl -O ftp://ftp.cyberciti.biz/backups-us-[a-z].tar.gz
curl -O http://server1.cyberciti.biz/music[1997-2000]/series[1-20]/dump{a,b,c,d,e,f}.tar.gz

You can set a step counter for the ranges to get every Nth number or letter:

##  grab http://server1.cyberciti.biz/files/foo1.txt, http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/foo3.txt, http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/foo5.txt ##
curl -O http://server1.cyberciti.biz/files/foo[1-10:2].txt  
 
## grab bar-a.pdf, bar-c.pdf, bar-e.pdf, and so on ##
curl -O http://server1.cyberciti.biz/files/bar-[a-z:2].pdf

Displaying a progress bar

You can force curl to show progress as a simple progress bar instead of the standard, more informational, meter:

curl -# -O http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/mastering-vi-vim.pdf

Sample outputs:

######################################################################## 100.0%

Dealing with url redirection

The following is recommended syntax for servers that may do http redirect before downloading files. Other servers may hide actual download file names.

curl -L -o 'file.name.here' 'http://example.com/download.php?fileID=foo'

Consider the following filezilla download url from sourceforge foss hosting platform:

## Problems ##
# 1. Long ulr name with special characters in it
# 2. Url hides actual download file name
# 3. Url does http 301 redirect to pick nearest mirror 
# -----------------------------------------------------
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/filezilla/FileZilla_Client/3.7.3/FileZilla_3.7.3_i686-apple-darwin9.app.tar.bz2?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2F&ts=1381651492&use_mirror=ncu

To avoid problems, use the following syntax:

## ****************** TIP *************************************** ##
## a) Put all urls in single-quotes to avoid nasty shell surprises
## b) The -L option follows url redirection
## c) The -o 'file' write file to given name
## ****************** TIP *************************************** ##
curl -L -o 'filezilla.tar.bz2' 'http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/filezilla/FileZilla_Client/3.7.3/FileZilla_3.7.3_i686-apple-darwin9.app.tar.bz2?r=http%3A%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2F&ts=1381651492&use_mirror=ncu'

Sample outputs:

Fig.02: Put the URL in single-quotes and accept url redirection with the -L option
Fig.02: Put the URL in single-quotes and accept url redirection with the -L option

Save bandwidth

You can pass the --compressed option to http based urls to request a compressed response using one of the algorithms curl supports, and save the uncompressed document. If this option is used and the server sends an unsupported encoding, curl will report an error:

curl -L -O --compressed 'http://server1.cyberciti.biz/large.report-tab.html'

Download a file using username and password

The syntax is:

Security alert: Anything (username/password) done over HTTP/FTP is completely open to interception. Do not pass username/passwords using ftp/http protocols.

 ## Insecure examples ##
curl ftp://username:passwd@ftp1.cyberciti.biz:21/path/to/backup.tar.gz
curl http://username:passwd@server1.cyberciti.biz/file/path/data.tar.gz
 
## Secure examples SSL/HTTPS/SFTP etc ##
curl --ftp-ssl -u UserName:PassWord ftp://ftp1.cyberciti.biz:21/backups/07/07/2012/mysql.blog.sql.tar.gz
 
## SFTP example ##
curl -u userNameHere sftp://home1.cyberciti.biz/~/docs/resume.pdf

Check out our previous video tutorial on curl command for more information:

(Video 01: curl Command Line Download Examples For FTP / HTTP Protocols)

Recommended readings

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

5 comment

  5. Great content!!

    I like using also ‘axel’ to download multiple parts from the same file at the same time, increasing the speed :)

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