Windows batch file file download from a URL

With PowerShell 2.0 (Windows 7 preinstalled) you can use:

(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://www.example.com/package.zip', 'package.zip')

Starting with PowerShell 3.0 (Windows 8 preinstalled) you can use Invoke-WebRequest:

Invoke-WebRequest http://www.example.com/package.zip -OutFile package.zip

From a batch file they are called:

powershell -Command "(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://www.example.com/package.zip', 'package.zip')"powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest http://www.example.com/package.zip -OutFile package.zip"

(PowerShell 2.0 is available for installation on XP, 3.0 for Windows 7)

There's a standard Windows component which can achieve what you're trying to do: BITS. It has been included in Windows since XP and 2000 SP3.

Run:

bitsadmin.exe /transfer "JobName" http://download.url/here.exe C:\destination\here.exe

The job name is simply the display name for the download job - set it to something that describes what you're doing.

This might be a little off topic, but you can pretty easily download a file using Powershell. Powershell comes with modern versions of Windows so you don't have to install any extra stuff on the computer. I learned how to do it by reading this page:

http://teusje.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/download-file-with-powershell/

The code was:

$webclient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient$url = "http://www.example.com/file.txt"$file = "$pwd\file.txt"$webclient.DownloadFile($url,$file)