Curl to grab remote filename after following location

Question

When downloading a file using curl, how would I follow a link location and use that for the output filename (without knowing the remote filename in advance)?

For example, if one clicks on the link below, you would download a filenamed "pythoncomplete.vim." However using curl's -O and -L options, the filename is simply the original remote-name, a clumsy "download_script.php?src_id=10872."

curl -O -L http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=10872

In order to download the file with the correct filename you would have to know the name of the file in advance:

curl -o pythoncomplete.vim -L http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=10872

It would be excellent if you could download the file without knowing the name in advance, and if not, is there another way to quickly pull down a redirected file via command line?

user_1399008 · Answer

If you can use wget instead of curl:

wget --content-disposition $url

user_10676767 · Answer

I had the same Problem like John Cooper. I got no filename but a Location File name back. His answer also worked but are 2 commands. This oneliner worked for me....

url="https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-latest-ssl&os=linux64&lang=de";url=$(curl -L --head -w '%{url_effective}' $url 2>/dev/null | tail -n1) ; curl -O $url

Stolen and added some stuff from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/126252/resolve-filename-from-a-remote-url-without-downloading-a-file

user_17976292 · Answer

instead of applying grep and other Unix-Fu operations, curl ships with a builtin "Write Out" option variable^[1] specifically for such a case, e.g.

$ curl -OJsL "http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=10872" -w "%{filename_effective}"
pythoncomplete.vim

^{[1]_{https://everything.curl.dev/usingcurl/verbose/writeout#available-write-out-variables}}

user_758836 · Answer

Using the solution proposed above, I wrote this helper function curl2file.

[UPDATED]

function curl2file() {
    url=$1
    url=$(curl -o /dev/null -L --head -w '%{url_effective}' $url 2>/dev/null | tail -n1) ; curl -O $url
}

Usage:

curl2file https://cloud.tsinghua.edu.cn/f/4666d28af98a4e63afb5/?dl=1

Curl to grab remote filename after following location

10 Answers