How can I replicate the functionality of a wget with node.js?

Question

Is it possible to essentially run a wget from within a node.js app? I'd like to have a script that crawls a site, and downloads a specific file, but the href of the link that goes the file changes fairly often. So, I figured the easiest way to go about doing it would be to find the href of the link, then just perform a wget on it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can run an external command using child_processes:

http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/child_process.html#child_process_child_process_exec_command_options_callback

var util = require('util'),
    exec = require('child_process').exec,
    child,
    url = 'url to file';

child = exec('wget ' + url,
  function (error, stdout, stderr) {
    console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
    console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
    if (error !== null) {
      console.log('exec error: ' + error);
    }
});