How to setup a cronjob to auto download a file on Mac?

Question

I'd like to setup a cron job to auto weekly download a file from my web hosting. I'm running OS X.6.8.

I want to specify the folder that the file downloads into.

How can this be done? I just want to overwrite the same file each time.

If the file isn't available publicly and you're ok with passphraseless authentification, see rsync over SSH with cron in osx-environment

Daniel Beck · Answer 1 · 2011-11-23 21:04:56Z

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Open Terminal, type crontab -e, press i to insert text and enter the following:

30 3 * * 0 curl http://superuser.com/questions/360848/how-to-setup-a-cronjob-to-auto-download-a-file-on-mac > Downloads/filename.html

Then save and quit by pressing Escape, typing :wq, and pressing Enter.

This will run the curl command to download a URL to Downloads/filename.html every Sunday (weekday with index 0) at 3:30 AM.

answered Nov 23 '11 at 21:04

	`cron` is available by OS X, but you could look into `launchd` instead. It's Apple's general purpose program launcher, daemon and service manager, watchdog and task scheduler and configured using property lists (XML files). – Daniel Beck Nov 23 '11 at 21:29
	That worked great, thanks very much. – Rob Nov 24 '11 at 13:27
	Quick question - by doing crontab -e I'm essentially seeing all the cron jobs? I.e I wanted to edit one I had setup so just did the same and edited and saved, is that ok? Also can I add another line underneath to do the same thing but from another web space? – Rob Nov 24 '11 at 13:35
	@Rob Yes, you're editing all your cron jobs, one per line. – Daniel Beck Nov 24 '11 at 13:54
	Great, thanks, I'll set the lot up then. – Rob Nov 24 '11 at 14:04

feedback

Lamar B · Answer 2 · 2011-11-23 21:10:58Z

up vote 0 down vote

wget with cron should work

*/5 * * * * wget -O /path/to/output/file -q -b http://example.com/somefile.ext

This would download the file every 5 minutes. I have been informed that OS X does not include wget by default so this may not be the best solution.

answered Nov 23 '11 at 21:02

	`wget` is not installed on OS X by default. – Daniel Beck Nov 23 '11 at 21:05
	My bad it's be a while since I've used OS X. – Lamar B Nov 23 '11 at 21:09

feedback

migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 23 '11 at 20:56