Csdrhrt

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 is 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.

There is Invoke-WebRequest in the upcoming PowerShell version 3:

Invoke-WebRequest http://www.google.com/ -OutFile c:google.html

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.

PowerShell V4 One-liner:

(iwr http://blog.stackexchange.com/).Content >index.html`

or

(iwr http://demo.mediacore.tv/files/31266.mp4).Content >video.mp4

This is basically Warren's (awesome) V3 one-liner (thanks for this!) - with just a tiny change in order to make it work in a V4 PowerShell.

Warren's one-liner - which simply uses wget rather than iwr - should still work for V3 (At least, I guess; didn't tested it, though). Anyway. But when trying to execute it in a V4 PowerShell (as I tried), you'll see PowerShell failing to resolve wget as a valid cmdlet/program.

For those interested, that is - as I picked up from Bob's comment in reply to the accepted answer (thanks, man!) - because as of PowerShell V4, wget and curl are aliased to Invoke-WebRequest, set to iwr by default. Thus, wget can not be resolved (as well as curl can not work here).

Here is a PowerShell function that resolves short URLs before downloading the file

function Get-FileFromUri {  

    param(  

        [parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0, ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)]

        [string]

        [Alias('Uri')]

        $Url,

        [parameter(Mandatory=$false, Position=1)]

        [string]

        [Alias('Folder')]

        $FolderPath

    )

    process {

        try {

            # resolve short URLs

            $req = [System.Net.HttpWebRequest]::Create($Url)

            $req.Method = "HEAD"

            $response = $req.GetResponse()

            $fUri = $response.ResponseUri

            $filename = [System.IO.Path]::GetFileName($fUri.LocalPath);

            $response.Close()

            # download file

            $destination = (Get-Item -Path "." -Verbose).FullName

            if ($FolderPath) { $destination = $FolderPath }

            if ($destination.EndsWith('')) {

                $destination += $filename

            } else {

                $destination += '' + $filename

            }

            $webclient = New-Object System.Net.webclient

            $webclient.downloadfile($fUri.AbsoluteUri, $destination)

            write-host -ForegroundColor DarkGreen "downloaded '$($fUri.AbsoluteUri)' to '$($destination)'"

        } catch {

            write-host -ForegroundColor DarkRed $_.Exception.Message

        }  

    }  

}  

Use it like this to download the file to the current folder:

Get-FileFromUri http://example.com/url/of/example/file  

Or to download the file to a specified folder:

Get-FileFromUri http://example.com/url/of/example/file  C:example-folder  

The following function will get a URL.

function Get-URLContent ($url, $path) {

  if (!$path) {

      $path = Join-Path $pwd.Path ([URI]$url).Segments[-1]

  }

  $wc = New-Object Net.WebClient

  $wc.UseDefaultCredentials = $true

  $wc.Proxy.Credentials = $wc.Credentials

  $wc.DownloadFile($url, $path)

}

Some comments:

1. The last 4 lines are only needed if you are behind an authenticating proxy. For simple use, (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($url, $path) works fine.


2. The path must be absolute, as the download is not done in your current directory, so relative paths will result in the download getting lost somewhere.


3. The if (!$path) {...} section handles the simple case where you just want to download the file to the current directory using the name given in the URL.

Use Windows 10 bash shell which includes wget once the windows feature is setup.

How to install Ubuntu bash shell on Windows:

YouTube: Running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows!

Windows Subsystem for Linux Documentation

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "http://www.google.com/" -outfile "2.pdf"

Note: -outfile parameter expects a string, so if your filename starts with a number, and not enclosed in quotes, no output file is created.

This does not affect filenames starting with a letter.