How to download a file using curl

Question

I'm on mac OS X and can't figure out how to download a file from a URL via the command line. It's from a static page so I thought copying the download link and then using curl would do the trick but it's not.

I referenced this StackOverflow question but that didn't work. I also referenced this article which also didn't work.

What I've tried:

curl -o https://github.com/jdfwarrior/Workflows.git
curl: no URL specified!
curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information

.

wget -r -np -l 1 -A zip https://github.com/jdfwarrior/Workflows.git
zsh: command not found: wget

How can a file be downloaded through the command line?

Answer 1

The easiest solution for your question is to keep the original filename. In that case, you just need to use a capital o ("-O") as option (not a zero=0!). So it looks like:

curl -O https://github.com/jdfwarrior/Workflows.git

Answer 2

The -o --output option means curl writes output to file you specicify instead of stdout, you put the url after -o, so the curl thinks the url is a file to write and no url specified. You need a file name after the -o, then the url. Since the url is HTTPS-based, maybe you also need the -k option:

curl -o ./filename -k https://github.com/jdfwarrior/Workflows.git

And wget is not available by default on OS X.

Answer 3

curl -OL https://github.com/jdfwarrior/Workflows.git

-O: This option used to write the output to a file which named like remote file we get. In this curl that file would be Workflow.git.

-L: This option used if the server reports that the requested page has moved to a different location (indicated with a Location: header and a 3XX response code), this option will make curl redo the request on the new place.

Ref: curl man page