EmiratesMac - View Single Post

Magnus · 17th May 2007, 08:37

Curl the download manager
by Magnus

Mac OS X comes with a very useful little utility called Curl. If you want the latest version you can get that online (curl.haxx.se). I think it’s fair to say that some Mac users have issues with downloading large files even with broadband connections. Sometimes a download goes half way and then dies, for whatever reason, and it’s highly annoying to say the least. There are download managers with nice graphical interfaces but Curl is already on your Mac and it’s pretty powerful. The curl.haxx.se web site says about curl: “curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, kerberos...), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks.” Curl is a command-line program and has a multitude of options and I’m not going to go through them here. It’s probably safe to say that you're never going to have to use them all. Let’s say you want to download NeoOffice, which weighs in at around 140MB. You may have tried different browser but the download never finishes. What you do is open a Terminal (Applications > Utilities) window, type curl -O and drag or paste the URL into the Terminal window. The file should download and Curl will show you the progress. The neat thing now is if it happens that the transfer is interrupted, you can later resume the download and you don’t have to start completely over. That’s nice if you’ve managed to get 120MB of the 140MB in NeoOffice, for example. Combine Curl with a little shell scripting and you have a powerful download tool that is hard to beat in terms of versatility and power.

17th May 2007, 08:37	#18 (permalink)
Magnus Administrator Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Dubai Posts: 8,536	Curl the download manager Curl the download manager by Magnus Mac OS X comes with a very useful little utility called Curl. If you want the latest version you can get that online (curl.haxx.se). I think it’s fair to say that some Mac users have issues with downloading large files even with broadband connections. Sometimes a download goes half way and then dies, for whatever reason, and it’s highly annoying to say the least. There are download managers with nice graphical interfaces but Curl is already on your Mac and it’s pretty powerful. The curl.haxx.se web site says about curl: “curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, kerberos...), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks.” Curl is a command-line program and has a multitude of options and I’m not going to go through them here. It’s probably safe to say that you're never going to have to use them all. Let’s say you want to download NeoOffice, which weighs in at around 140MB. You may have tried different browser but the download never finishes. What you do is open a Terminal (Applications > Utilities) window, type curl -O and drag or paste the URL into the Terminal window. The file should download and Curl will show you the progress. The neat thing now is if it happens that the transfer is interrupted, you can later resume the download and you don’t have to start completely over. That’s nice if you’ve managed to get 120MB of the 140MB in NeoOffice, for example. Combine Curl with a little shell scripting and you have a powerful download tool that is hard to beat in terms of versatility and power.