How to use wget in PowerShell console with username and password

Question

I have seen couple of answers on SO like this and this. But I always get some error similar to the following.

Not sure what am I doing wrong. I tried with the following variations, but all giving similar error. Please help.

wget --user "[email protected]" --password "MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user="[email protected]" --password="MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user='[email protected]' --password='MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user [email protected] --password MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip

Invoke-WebRequest : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument
'--password=MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd'.
At line:1 char:1
+ wget --user='[email protected]' --password='MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd'  ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Invoke-WebRequest], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

Ansgar Wiechers Ansgar Wiechers · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-01T14:31:04

It looks like you actually want to run the program wget.exe, but PowerShell has a builtin alias wget for the cmdlet Invoke-WebRequest that takes precedence over an executable, even if the executable is in the PATH. That cmdlet doesn't have parameters --user or --password, which is what causes the error you observed.

You can enforce running the executable by adding its extension, so PowerShell doesn't confuse it with the alias:

wget.exe --user '[email protected]' --password 'MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip

Note that you should put string literals with special characters like $ in single quotes, otherwise PowerShell would expand something like "MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" to "MyWhatEver@pas", because the variable $w0rd is undefined.

If you want to use the cmdlet Invoke-WebRequest rather than the wget executable you need to provide credentials via a PSCredential object:

$uri  = 'https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip'
$user = '[email protected]'
$pass = 'MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = New-Object Management.Automation.PSCredential ($user, $pass)

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -Credential $cred

How to use wget in PowerShell console with username and password

1 Answers