Script file download

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.

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.

The parameter -OutFile is required. With the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet, we can provide the credentials that are needed for downloading the files. If you are creating a script that will need to run automatically, then you will need to store the credentials in the script itself. I recommend creating a secure string password and store it in a text file on the computer that is running the script. This cmdlet allows you to queue files, set priority useful for bandwidth limitation , can run in the background and download multiple files asynchronous.

This is the most basic method of downloading a file with BitsTransfer, you only need a source and destination. By default, the download jobs run in the foreground consuming the maximum bandwidth available. You can change this by setting the priority of the job:. Another option is to run the download job asynchronous , allowing you to start multiple download jobs at the same time.

As you can see I have downloaded the same bin file as before. But if we look in the destination folder we only see a. To download multiple files with PowerShell we first need to know which files are available. We can use the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet first to get the content from the webpage.

This will return not only the content of the webpage but also other properties, like Links and InputFields. We can filter the links with a simple like query and select only the href property from each link. So we now have the links for all random binary files.

All we need to do is download each one of them. It allows you to download multiple files simultaneously in the background with the parameter -Asynchronous. Other advantages of the BitsTransfer cmdlet is it can handle connection interruptions and is aware of your network bandwidth usage.

We can start all the download jobs by using the parameter — Asynchronous. Without it, the BitsTransfer cmdlet downloads the first file completely before starting the next download while putting your script on hold in the meantime.

You can use the Get-BitTransfer cmdlet to show the progress of the download. If you want to stop the download job then use the Remove-BitTransfer cmdlet. You can stop a single job based on its JobId or all jobs with:. When using Asynchronous it creates a temp file during the download process. But to actually use the file you will need to run the following cmdlet:. Instead, we can simply use the Copy-Item cmd to download a file from a server.

If you want to know more about the Copy-Item cmdlet, then you should read this article where I explain more about the cmdlet and alternatives. The method to download zip files is pretty much the same as a normal file. Then we also created a download button to facilitate downloading files.

This approach will create text data on the fly and then use JavaScript to create a text file and then download it. Attach an event listener looking for a click to a download button. In this approach, we will use the Axios library to download files.

Blob stands for Binary Large Object and is a data type that can store binary data. This method is not restricted to the plain text entered by the user like the previous method. We can request any sort of data from an API and then use this approach to save data inside our computer. All the major browsers support all the above methods except the method using the Axios library.

Internet Explorer still does not supports the native ES6 promises, and Axios depends heavily on them. Download Algorithm Create a text area to enter the text data. This will help us to replace certain special characters with a combination of escape sequences.

Append this created element to the body of the document HTML page. Use element.