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WGET is a free tool to crawl websites and download files via the command line.

In this wget tutorial, we will learn how to install and how to use wget.

What is Wget?

Wget is free command-line tool created by the GNU Project that is used todownload files from the internet.

• It lets you download files from the internet via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS (web pages, pdf, xml sitemaps, etc.).
• It provides recursive downloads, which means that Wget downloads the requested document, then the documents linked from that document, and then the next, etc.
• It follows the links and directory structure.
• It lets you overwrite the links with the correct domain, helping you create mirrors of websites.

How to Install Wget

Check if Wget is installed

Open Terminal and type:

If it is installed, it will return the version.

If not, follow the next steps to download wget on either Mac or Windows.

Download Wget on Mac

The recommended method to install wget on Mac is with Homebrew.

First, install Homebrew.

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then, install wget.

Download Wget on Windows

To install and configure wget for Windows:

1. Download wget for Windows and install the package.
2. Copy the wget.exe file into your C:\Windows\System32 folder.
3. Open the command prompt (cmd.exe) and run wget to see if it is installed.

Here is a quick video showing you how to download wget on windows 10.

Wget Basics

Let’s look at the wget syntax, view the basic commands structure and understand the most important options.

Wget Syntax

Wget has two arguments: [OPTION] and [URL] .

wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

• [OPTION] tells what to do with the [URL] argument provided after. It has a short and a long-form (ex: -V and --version are doing the same thing).
• [URL] is the file or the directory you wish to download.
• You can call many OPTIONS or URLs at once.

View WGET commands

To view available wget commands, use wget -h.

14 Wget Commands to Extract Web Pages

Here are the 11 best things that you can do with Wget:

1. Download a single file
2. Download a files to a specific directory
3. Rename a downloaded files
4. Define User Agent
5. Extract as Googlebot
6. Extract Robots.txt when it changes
7. Convert links on a page
8. Mirror a single page
9. Extract Multiple URLs from a list
10. Limit Speed
11. Number of attempts
12. Use Proxies
13. Continue Interrupted Downloads
14. Extract Entire Website

Download a single file with Wget

$ wget https://example.com/robots.txt

Download a File to a Specific Output Directory

Here replace <YOUR-PATH> by the output directory location where you want to save the file.

$ wget ‐P <YOUR-PATH> https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Rename Downloaded File when Retrieving with Wget

To output the file with a different name:

$ wget -O <YOUR-FILENAME.html> https://example.com/file.html

Define User Agent in WGET

Identify yourself. Define your user-agent.

$ wget --user-agent=Chrome https://example.com/file.html

$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/86.0.4240.198 Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" https://example.com/path

Let’s extract robots.txt only if the latest version in the server is more recent than the local copy.

First time that you extract use -S to keep a timestamps of the file.

$ wget -S https://example.com/robots.txt

Later, to check if the robots.txt file has changed, and download it if it has.

$ wget -N https://example.com/robots.txt

Wget command to Convert Links on a Page

Convert the links in the HTML so they still work in your local version. (ex: example.com/path to localhost:8000/path)

$ wget --convert-links https://example.com/path

Mirror a Single Webpage in Wget

To mirror a single web page so that it can work on your local.

$ wget -E -H -k -K -p --convert-links https://example.com/path

Add all urls in a urls.txt file.

https://example.com/1 https://example.com/2 https://example.com/3

To be a good citizen of the web, it is important not to crawl too fast by using --wait and --limit-rate.

• --wait=1: Wait 1 second between extractions.
• --limit-rate=10K: Limit the download speed (bytes per second)

Define Number of Retry Attempts in Wget

Sometimes the internet connection fails, sometimes the attempts it blocked, sometimes the server does not respond. Define a number of attempts with the -tries function.

$ wget -tries=10 https://example.com

How to Use Proxies With Wget?

To use proxies with Wget, we need to update the ~/.wgetrc file located at /etc/wgetrc.

You can modify the ~/.wgetrc in your favourite text editor

$ vi ~/.wgetrc # VI $ code ~/.wgetrc # VSCode

And add these lines:

Then, by running any wget command, you’ll be using proxies.

Alternatively, you can use the -e command to run wget with proxies without changing the environment variables.

wget -e use_proxy=yes -e http_proxy=http://proxy.server.address:port/ https://example.com

How to remove the Wget proxies?

When you don’t want to use the proxies anymore, update the ~/.wgetrc to remove the lines that you added or simply use the command below to override them:

Continue Interrupted Downloads with Wget

When your retrieval process is interrupted, continue the download with restarting the whole extraction using the -c command.

$ wget -c https://example.com

Recursive mode extract a page, and follows the links on the pages to extract them as well.

This is extracting your entire site and can put extra load on your server. Be sure that you know what you do or that you involve the devs.

$ wget --recursive --page-requisites --adjust-extension --span-hosts --wait=1 --limit-rate=10K --convert-links --restrict-file-names=windows --no-clobber --domains example.com --no-parent example.com

$ wget --spider -r https://example.com -o wget.log

Wget VS Curl

Wget’s strength compared to curl is its ability to download recursively. This means that it will download a document, then follow the links and then download those documents as well.

Use Wget With Python

Wget is strictly command line, but there is a package that you can import the wget package that mimics wget.

import wget url = 'https://www.jcchouinard.com/robots.txt' filename = wget.download(url) filename

Debug Wget Command Not Found

If you get the -bash: wget: command not found error on Mac, Linux or Windows, it means that the wget GNU is either not installed or does not work properly.

Go back and make sure that you installed wget properly.

About Wget

Wget FAQs

What is Wget Used For?

Wget is used to download files from the Internet without the use of a browser. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.

How Does Wget Work?

Wget is non-interactive and allows to download files from the internet in the background without the need of a browser or user interface. It works by following links to create local versions of remote web sites, while respecting robots.txt.

What is the Difference Between Wget and cURL?

Both Wget and cURL are command-line utilities that allow file transfer from the internet. Although, Curl generally offers more features than Wget, wget provide features such as recursive downloads.

Can you Use Wget With Python?

Yes, you can run wget get in Python by installing the wget library with $pip install wget

Does Wget Respect Robots.txt?

Yes, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt)

Is Wget Free?

Yes, GNU Wget is free software that everyone can use, redistribute and/or modify under the terms of the GNU General Public License

What is recursive download?

Recursive download, or recursive retrieval, is the capacity of downloading documents, follow the links within them and finally downloading those documents until all linked documents are downloaded, or the maximum depth specified is reached.

How to specify download location in Wget?

Use the -P or –directory-prefix=PREFIX. Example: $ wget -P /path <url>

Conclusion

This is it.

You now know how to install and use Wget in your command-line.

SEO Strategist at Tripadvisor, ex- Seek (Melbourne, Australia). Specialized in technical SEO. In a quest to programmatic SEO for large organizations through the use of Python, R and machine learning.

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