In the browser, navigating to this URL initiates a 302 (moved temporarily) request which in turn downloads a file.
http://www.targetsite.com/target.php/?event=download&task_id=123
When I view what is actually happening via Chrome network tools I see that the redirect is going to a dynamically generated path that cancels itself immediately after download. In other words, even if I know that full path I will not have time to manually call it.
So, how in using the command line can I mimic the browser actions?
I tried
curl --cookies bin/cookies.txt -O -L "http://www.targetsite.com/target.php/?event=download&task_id=123" --compressed
but this just returns gibberish. The goal of this is to programmatically download this file without having to navigate to the site. Unfortunately I cannot share the site here as it is behind a log-in.
You need to supply the -L or --location option in order to enable curl to follow HTTP redirects.
Quoting from man curl:
-L, --location
(HTTP/HTTPS) If the server reports that the requested page has
moved to a different location (indicated with a Location: header
and a 3XX response code), this option will make curl redo the
request on the new place. If used together with -i, --include or
-I, --head, headers from all requested pages will be shown. When
authentication is used, curl only sends its credentials to the
initial host. If a redirect takes curl to a different host, it
won't be able to intercept the user+password. See also --loca‐
tion-trusted on how to change this. You can limit the amount of
redirects to follow by using the --max-redirs option.
When curl follows a redirect and the request is not a plain GET
(for example POST or PUT), it will do the following request with
a GET if the HTTP response was 301, 302, or 303. If the response
code was any other 3xx code, curl will re-send the following
request using the same unmodified method.