wget/cURL alternative native to Windows?

Question

Is there a wget or cURL type command line utility native to Windows Vista? How does it work?

Answer 1

There is no wget alternative really, you can use Wget for Windows and assign the path in your Environment Variables to get it working how you want?

Answer 2

Native to Windows (comes preinstalled, and depends on "bits" Windows service):

bitsadmin

Can do what wget does, and prolly more (you can control an ongoing job via api like commands - for example you can get status speed and cancel if it is too slow)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa362813(v=vs.85).aspx

Example usage from my own experience (you can do parallel downloads in the same .bat, or do sequencial downloads in the same job):

bitsadmin /create thisissomejobname

bitsadmin /addfile thisissomejobname http://kakao.ro/Pictures.iso C:\john_pictures.iso

bitsadmin /SetCredentials thisissomejobname Server BASIC somehttpuser somehttppassword

bitsadmin /resume thisissomejobname

REM how to get status:
bitsadmin /info thisissomejobname

Answer 3

It seams you only need to download a alternative browser. You can use this command to download Mozilla Firefox with the command prompt:

    explorer.exe http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/6.0.2/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%206.0.2.exe

This launches also the internet explorer, but only with a basic feature set. This should work even if internet explorer is broken (in most cases).

You can also use the FTP-Command. Type into the command prompt following commands:

1. FTP - Which opens the FTP-Client
2. open ftp.mozilla.org - Which connects to Mozilla-FTP
3. Just login as Anonymous and an empty password.
4. cd /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/4.0.1/win32/en-US/ -To change the directory
5. recv "Firefox Setup 4.0.1.exe" - To Download Firefox Installer. The File is located in the current folder of the command prompt. (Usually your Profile-Folder)
6. bye to close the FTP-Client
7. exit to close the command prompt.

Answer 4

Powershell v3 CTP1 comes with a command like wget/curl. It's called Invoke-Web-Request. To learn more, you can visit this post: http://rambletech.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/windows-powershell-v3-includes-command-like-wgetcurl/

Answer 5

Native cURL for Windows is available here. There are many flavors available- with SSL support, without SSL support. You don't need the extra baggage of cygwin and the likes, just one small exe file.

Answer 6

I often use PowerShell for simple things:

$wc = New-Object Net.WebClient
$wc.DownloadString('...')

or DownloadFile if you want something downloaded like wget does and package that off into a function. Of course, this is very rough and won't have any of the niceties like resumable downloads and similar.