Do you need to download files from the web but hate repeatedly clicking links? If your job involves downloading files from the web regularly, you will probably want to automate the task. Why not use PowerShell to download files much like an alternative PowerShell wget?
For example, the code below downloads a file with the name 10MB.zip from a website. Then it saves the downloaded file to C:\dload\10MB.zip. You may copy the code below and paste it into your PowerShell session to test.
How to download a file using PowerShell in Windows 10
When it comes to downloading files straight from the web, Invoke-RestMethod is an excellent contender. Do not be deceived into thinking otherwise. There is not much difference between using Invoke-RestMethod and Invoke-WebRequest when used for downloading files from a direct web link.
Also, since the file link is an HTTP source and not HTTPS, it means that you are sending an unencrypted authentication. Typically, you should avoid using HTTP sources for security. But if you must use an HTTP source, you need to add the -AllowUnencryptedAuthentication switch to your command.
The fundamental way to use Start-BitsTransfer in PowerShell to download a file is to specify a source and destination. Using the script below, you only need to change the $source and $destination values according to your requirements.
Suppose the destination is not specified, Start-BitsTransfer downloads and saves the file to the current working directory. For example, if you run Start-BitsTransfer from C:\dload, the file downloads to the same directory.
To use the WebClient class, you need to initiate an object as a System.Net.WebClient **type. In the example below, the $webClient is the new System.Net.WebClient object. Then, using the DownloadFile() method starts the download of the file from the source.
If the source requires authentication to allow the file download, you can use the code below. The first line prompts for the credential and stores it to the $credentials variable. The value of $credential is then included in the file download request.
Like the WebClient class, you need to create first the System.Net.Http.HttpClient. Using the code below downloads the file from the $source to the $destination. Refer to the comments above each line to know what each line of code does.
In situations where downloading a file requires authentication, you need to add the credential to the HttpClient object. To include a credential to the file download request, create a new System.Net.Http.HttpClientHandler object to store the credentials.
The file download methods covered in this article works on both Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core. This means that these methods apply to both Windows and Non-Windows systems, with the exclusion of Start-BitsTransfer.
If you are working in a hybrid IT environment, you often need to download or upload files from or to the cloud in your PowerShell scripts. If you only use Windows servers that communicate through the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, you can simply use the Copy-Item cmdlet to copy the file from a network share:
In the example, we just download the HTML page that the web server at www.contoso.com generates. Note that, if you only specify the folder without the file name, as you can do with Copy-Item, PowerShell will error:
If you omit the local path to the folder, Invoke-WebRequest will just use your current folder. The -Outfile parameter is always required if you want to save the file. The reason is that, by default, Invoke-WebRequest sends the downloaded file to the pipeline.
I am running a script on a scheduled basis (daily) to download a .csv file. However the uri changes every month, so I was wondering if the uri destination value can be set based on a value in a reference file as opposed to hard coding it, if so how?
If you have a webserver where directory browsing is allowed, I guess you could use invoke-webrequest/invoke-restmethod to that folder which would list available files. Then you could parse the output and ask for specific files to be downloaded (or all of them). But I dont see any straight-forward way.
This works fine but I cannot step through this content. When I put this content through a foreach loop it dumps every line at once. If I save it to a file then I can use System.IO.File::ReadLines to steps through line by line but that only works if I download the file. How can I accomplish this without downloading the file?
I am trying to download files from a site, sadly they are be generated to include the Epoch Unix timestamp in the file name. example: Upload_Result_20210624_1624549986563.txt system_Result_20210624_1624549986720.csv
For a while now I've been using a PS script to download PowerBI bi-monthly and using the BITS, it's been pretty solid and now so much stronger now since I removed the -Asynchronous at the end of the Start-BitsTransfer
If you use PowerShell to manage Windows, sooner or later you will need to download a file. This is especially true for Windows Server, since best practices have long warned against browsing the internet from a web browser installed on a server.
Before explaining how, I want to note that each of the three download techniques accepts a common set of parameters. These parameters include A), the URL that points to the file that is being downloaded, and B), a path to where the file will be stored on your local system once it is downloaded.
Notice that the path not only contains the file system location but also the filename to use for the file you will download. This filename does not have to match the filename within the URL. In fact, you can use a different filename as a way of renaming a file when you download it.
The New-Object cmdlet, as you may already know, can be used to create a .NET framework object or a COM object. If your goal is to download a file, you will need to create a System.Net.WebClient object. When you create this object, you must call the DownloadFile method and provide values for the URL and for the output path.
PowerShell is a great scripting language to write all kinds of scripts. But did you know that you can also download a file with PowerShell? You can use PowerShell to download single or multiple files from the internet.
There are a couple of methods when it comes to downloading files with PowerShell. We can download files from any URL with PowerShell, local network shares, and from behind credential protected websites.
In this article, we are going to start with the most straightforward method to download a single file and we are also going to take a look at other (faster) methods to download a file with PowerShell.
We are going to start with the most common way to download a file from an URL with PowerShell. For this, we will be using the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet. To download a file we need to know the source URL and give up a destination for the file that we want to download.
A faster and better way is to use the Start-BitsTransfer cmdlet in PowerShell. This cmdlet allows you to queue files, set priority (useful for bandwidth limitation), can run in the background and download multiple files asynchronous.
The method to download zip files is pretty much the same as a normal file. But I wanted to show you how that downloads and extracts the zip file. This way you can immediately process the files inside the zip file without manual interaction.
Try to use the Start-BitsTransfer cmdlet for downloading files and set the priority to normal when using it in an autonouse script. BitsTransfer has more option when it comes to retries, resuming and bandwidth control then Invoke-WebRequest.
Is there any way to set an item property for the files downloaded? I have a scenario where i need to update the file metadata such as date or ID(reading from a txt file) to the downloaded files in a folder.
Hello, I want to use the Authentication with Invoke-WebRequest you mentioned in the webpage. I want to use a file that needs to be logged in to a website, and then the file can be downloaded after logging in to the website, because the code you tested is used here. is not executable
Thanks for this. I plan to use this in conjunction with Windows task scheduler to download a fresh file every week. I do not wish to overwrite the previous files. How do I modify the Invoke-Webrequest script to do this?
Depending on how you download the file you may need to unblock the file using the Unblock-Filecmdlet. Unzip the contents to the location of your choice and run pwsh.exe from there. Unlikeinstalling the MSI packages, installing the ZIP archive doesn't check for prerequisites. Forremoting over WSMan to work properly, ensure that you've met the prerequisites.
There are so many possibilities around scripts, downloading multiple files at the same time, auto extracting ZIP files, the list goes on and on. If you ever wanted to download the various Windows patching files from the Windows Update Catalog, you could script it if you have the exact URL.
You will certainly come across files that require authentication before downloading. If this is the case, you can use the -Credential switch on Invoke-WebRequest to handle these downloads.
The Unblock-File cmdlet lets you open files that were downloaded from the internet. It unblocksPowerShell script files that were downloaded from the internet so you can run them, even when thePowerShell execution policy is RemoteSigned. By default, these files are blocked to protect thecomputer from untrusted files.
PowerShell will not correct file extensions. If you use PowerShell to download a JPG file and tell it to save it as a PNG when giving it the save location, PowerShell will not correct you. This will result in you being unable to open the file because the extension is incorrect. You will have to fix the file extension before you can open the file.
I will be downloading a test file from Internode at the following URL: The scripts will be executed 10 times each with the average displayed as the result. 2ff7e9595c
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