Is it possible to download using the Windows command line?

Question

Without using any non-standard (Windows included) utilities, is it possible to download using the Windows command line?

The preferred version is Windows XP, but it's also interesting to know for newer versions.

To further clarify my question:

It has to be using HTTP
The file needs to be saved
Standard clean Windows install, no extra tools

So basically, since everybody is screaming Wget, I want simple Wget functionality, without using Wget.

score 76 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 14 '15 at 16:51

Starting with Windows 7, I believe there's one single method that hasn't been mentioned yet that's easy:

Syntax:

bitsadmin  /transfer job_name       /download  /priority priority   URL  local\path\file

Example:

bitsadmin  /transfer mydownloadjob  /download  /priority normal  ^
                  http://example.com/filename.zip  C:\Users\username\Downloads\filename.zip

^{(Broken into two separate lines with ^ for readability
(to avoid scrolling).)}

Warning: As pointed out in the comments, the bitsadmin help message starts by saying:

BITSAdmin is deprecated and is not guaranteed to be available in future versions of Windows.
Administrative tools for the BITS service are now provided by BITS PowerShell cmdlets.

... but another comment reported that it works on Windows 8.

score 54 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 19 '19 at 08:15

You can write a VBScript and run it from the command line

Create a file downloadfile.vbs and insert the following lines of code:

' Set your settings
    strFileURL = "http://www.it1.net/images/it1_logo2.jpg"
    strHDLocation = "c:\logo.jpg"

' Fetch the file
    Set objXMLHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")

    objXMLHTTP.open "GET", strFileURL, false
    objXMLHTTP.send()

If objXMLHTTP.Status = 200 Then
Set objADOStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
objADOStream.Open
objADOStream.Type = 1 'adTypeBinary

objADOStream.Write objXMLHTTP.ResponseBody
objADOStream.Position = 0    'Set the stream position to the start

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If objFSO.Fileexists(strHDLocation) Then objFSO.DeleteFile strHDLocation
Set objFSO = Nothing

objADOStream.SaveToFile strHDLocation
objADOStream.Close
Set objADOStream = Nothing
End if

Set objXMLHTTP = Nothing

Run it from the command line as follows:

cscript.exe downloadfile.vbs

score 39 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

39

Windows 7 includes PowerShell and there's pretty much nothing you can't do with PowerShell.

Native alternative to wget in Windows PowerShell?

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

Community

1

answered Oct 23 '09 at 15:27

user15130

507

score 26 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 05 '16 at 21:07

26

PowerShell (included with Windows 8 and included with .NET for earlier releases) has this capability. The powershell command allows running arbitrary PowerShell commands from the command line or a .bat file. Thus, the following line is what's wanted:

powershell -command "& { (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://example.com/', 'c:\somefile') }"

edited Apr 05 '16 at 21:07

Peter Mortensen

12,326

answered May 29 '14 at 02:22

Nik

269

score 19 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 06 '14 at 17:40

I found a way of doing it, but really, just install Wget.

You can use Internet Explorer from a command line (iexplore.exe) and then enter a URL as an argument. So, run:

iexplore.exe http://blah.com/filename.zip

Whatever the file is, you'll need to specify it doesn't need confirmation ahead of time. Lo and behold, it will automatically perform the download. So yes, it is technically possible, but good lord do it in a different way.

score 14 · Answer 6 · edited Jun 06 '14 at 18:09

Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer) can download files via HTTP. Just enter the URL into the Address bar. Or from the command line, for example, C:\windows\explorer.exe http://somewhere.com/filename.ext.

You get the classic File Download prompt. Unless the file is a type that Windows Explorer knows how to display inline, (.html, .jpg, .gif), in which case you would then need to right-click to save it.

I just tested this on my VMware image of a virgin install of Windows XP 2002 SP1, and it works fine.

score 7 · Answer 7 · edited Mar 26 '18 at 08:46

7

You can use (in a standard Windows bat):

powershell -command "& { iwr http://www.it1.net/it1_logo2.jpg -OutFile logo.jpg }"

It seems to require PowerShell v4...

(Thanks to that comment and this one)

edited Mar 26 '18 at 08:46

answered May 10 '16 at 14:10

Anthony O.

280

score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 06 '16 at 17:07

Use FTP.

From the command line:

ftp ftp.somesite.com
user
password

etc. FTP is included in every Windows version I can remember; probably not in 3.1, maybe not in Windows 95, but certainly everything after that.

@RM: It is going to be rough if you don't want to download any other tools. There exists a command line Wget for Windows and Wget is designed to do exactly what you're asking for.

score 5 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 21 '13 at 21:55

Use PowerShell like this:

Create a download.ps1 file:

param($url, $filename)
$client = new-object System.Net.WebClient 
$client.DownloadFile( $url, $filename)

Now you can download a file like this:

powershell Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
powershell -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -File "download.ps1" "http://somewhere.com/filename.ext" "d:\filename.ext"

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 16 '17 at 21:25

2

File can be download via below method

bitsadmin /transfer wcb /priority high https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf C:\Program Files (x86)\Dell Update\Agenda21.pdf

answered Dec 16 '17 at 21:25

Mansur Ul Hasan

231

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Apr 25 '20 at 17:58

2

On Win CMD (if you have write access):

set url=https://www.nsa.org/content/hl-images/2017/02/09/NSA.jpg
set file=file.jpg
certutil -urlcache -split -f %url% %file%
echo Done.

Built in Windows app. No need for external downloads.

Tested on Win 10

answered Apr 25 '20 at 17:58

Zimba

1,291

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 10 '20 at 14:41

From Windows 10 build 17063 and later, ‘Curl’ is now included, so that you can execute it directly from Cmd.exe or PowerShell.exe.

For example:

C:\>curl.exe -V
curl 7.55.1 (Windows) libcurl/7.55.1 WinSSL
Release-Date: 2017-11-14, security patched: 2019-11-05
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps http https imap imaps pop3 pop3s smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IPv6 Largefile SSPI Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM SSL

To download a file:

curl.exe -O https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/superuser/Img/logo.svg

score 2 · Answer 13 · edited Aug 30 '14 at 07:02

2

If you have python installed here's an example which fetches the get-pip.py from the web

python -c "import urllib; urllib.urlretrieve ('https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py', r'C:\python27\Tools\get-pip.py')"

edited Aug 30 '14 at 07:02

gronostaj

58,482

answered Aug 29 '14 at 23:15

Sipherlab

31

score 1 · Answer 14 · edited Aug 20 '11 at 04:12

There are a few ways that you can download using the command line in Windows:

You can use Cygwin.

Note: the included apps are not native Linux apps. You must rebuild your application from source if you want to run on Windows.
Using telnet it's possible to make a request but you won't see any processing.
You can write bat or VBS scripts.
Write your own program that you can run from cmd.exe.

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Oct 23 '09 at 15:01

1

If you install Telnet, I imagine you could make a HTTP request to a server to download a file.

You can also install Cygwin, and use wget to download a file as well. This is a very easy way to download files from the command line.

answered Oct 23 '09 at 15:01

EvilChookie

4,577

score 1 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 06 '14 at 17:39

1

You can install the Linux application Wget on Windows. It can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm. You can then issue the command 'wget (inserturlhere)' or any other URL in your command prompt, and it will allow you to download that URL/file/image.

edited Jun 06 '14 at 17:39

Peter Mortensen

12,326

answered Oct 23 '09 at 15:06

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Oct 23 '09 at 15:04

In default Windows, you can't download via HTTP. Windows is a GUI-centric OS, so it lacks many of the commandline tools you'd find in other OS's, like wget, which would be the prime candidate.

System.Net.WebClient.DownloadFile(), a function in the WiniNet API, can download files, but I'm not sure how far you're getting into actual development vs. a batch file.

Is it possible to download using the Windows command line?

17 Answers17

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