239
votes

In a shell script, I want to download a file from some URL and save it to a specific folder. What is the specific CLI flag I should use to download files to a specific folder with the curl command, or how else do I get that result?

4
It would seem that bash programming is programming...rjurney

4 Answers

353
votes

I don't think you can give a path to curl, but you can CD to the location, download and CD back.

cd target/path && { curl -O URL ; cd -; }

Or using subshell.

(cd target/path && curl -O URL)

Both ways will only download if path exists. -O keeps remote file name. After download it will return to original location.

If you need to set filename explicitly, you can use small -o option:

curl -o target/path/filename URL
31
votes

This option comes in curl 7.73.0:

curl --create-dirs -O --output-dir /tmp/receipes https://example.com/pancakes.jpg
21
votes

curl doesn't have an option to that (without also specifying the filename), but wget does. The directory can be relative or absolute. Also, the directory will automatically be created if it doesn't exist.

wget -P relative/dir "$url"

wget -P /absolute/dir "$url"
2
votes

For powershell in Windows, you can add relative path + filename to --output flag:

curl -L  http://github.com/GorvGoyl/Notion-Boost-browser-extension/archive/master.zip --output build_firefox/master-repo.zip

here build_firefox is relative folder.