Native alternative to wget in Windows PowerShell?

Question

I know I can download and install the aformentioned library (wget for Windows), but my question is this:

In Windows PowerShell, is there a native alternative to wget?

I need wget simply to retrieve a file from a given URL with HTTP GET. For instance:

wget http://www.google.com/

Answer 1

If you just need to retrieve a file, you can use the DownloadFile method of the WebClient object:

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

Where $url is a string representing the file's URL, and $path representing the local path the file will be saved to.

Note that $path must include the file name; it can't just be a directory.

Answer 2

It's a bit messy but there is this blog post which gives you instructions for downloading files.

Alternatively (and this is one I'd recommend) you can use BITS:

Import-Module BitsTransfer
Start-BitsTransfer -source "http://urlToDownload"

It will show progress and will download the file to the current directory.

Answer 3

Not a native solution, but you can use PsUrl module from PsGet repository.

Do the following:

• If you haven't done it yet, run Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned to allow installation of signed modules from remote sources (warning: make sure you understand the security implications)
• Install PsGet module installer for PowerShell from http://psget.net/
• Install PsUrl module: install-module PsUrl

Now, you can just use PsUrl like wget:

get-url http://example.com/

Just the way as wget would behave.

Note that you not only get wget to work, but you can also now easily install other modules from PsGet repository.