Command to download a file from a website silently

In the example of curl , the author apparently believes that it's important to tell the user the progress of the download.

For a very small file, that status display is not terribly helpful. Let's try it with a bigger file this is the baby names file from the Social Security Administration to see how the progress indicator animates:.

Quick note: If you're new to the command-line, you're probably used to commands executing every time you hit Enter. In this case, the command is so long because of the URL that I broke it down into two lines with the use of the backslash , i. This is solely to make it easier for you to read. As far as the computer cares, it just joins the two lines together as if that backslash weren't there and runs it as one command. The curl progress indicator is a nice affordance, but let's just see if we get curl to act like all of our Unix tools.

In curl 's documentation of options , there is an option for silence:. Silent or quiet mode. Don't show progress meter or error messages. Makes Curl mute. So those are the basics for the curl command.

There are many, many more options, but for now, we know how to use curl to do something that is actually quite powerful: fetch a file, anywhere on the Internet, from the simple confines of our command-line. Before we go further, though, let's look at the various ways this simple command can be re-written and, more crucially, screwed up:. As you might have noticed in the --silent documentation, it lists the alternative form of -s. Name the file filelist. The first column should contain the link to the source, while the second column must contain the destination path.

The file contents would like the one below. Once the CSV file is ready, use the command below to begin the file download. Refer to the demo below to see how the code above works.

As you can see, the download starts, and you see the download progress. The PowerShell prompt is not available during the download process. Suppose you want to start the download process as a background job. To do so, you only have to add the -Asynchronous switch at the end of the Start-BitsTransfer command. Initially, the state of each job would show c onnecting. To check the download job status, use the Get-BitsTransfer cmdlet.

PowerShell is based on. NET, and its nature makes it capable of leveraging the power of. NET itself. If you want to know more about these two. HttpClient vs. To use the WebClient class, you need to initiate an object as a System. WebClient object. Then, using the DownloadFile method starts the download of the file from the source. Please copy the code below and run it in your PowerShell session to test. However, the PowerShell prompt will be locked until the download is complete.

If the source requires authentication to allow the file download, you can use the code below. Instead, use the System. HttpClient class. It appears that the WebClient class is obsolete, and the new class that Microsoft is endorsing is the HttpClient class. The next section talks about using the HttpClient class in PowerShell to download files from the web.

Like the WebClient class, you need to create first the System. 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. HttpClientHandler object to store the credentials. You can copy the code below and run it in PowerShell to test.

AutoIt is a kind of mashup of VBScript, PowerShell, and a few other languages that makes it easy to do things like click buttons and enter text into text boxes automatically. It's commonly used to automate GUI installations. MSIs are made for silent installs. Their property values can be self-contained or stored in MST files so that a user doesn't have to type them in at runtime, so there's no need to automate their UIs. Another option is to use Chocolatey, but that depends on whether the required applications are already packaged you can package your own as well, provided there are no licensing or redistribution limitations.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 7 years, 3 months ago. Active 1 year, 11 months ago. Viewed 11k times. Improve this question. Peter Herbert Peter Herbert 33 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 5 5 bronze badges. Running them silently might be done a lil differently depending on what installer software and version the software developer used. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

I have just had a look at the msiexec. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes.