Wget URL Reader
Overview
Fetches content from URLs using wget command-line tool. Supports downloading files, reading web pages, and retrieving API responses.
Instructions
- When user provides a URL to read or fetch:
- Validate the URL format - Use wget with appropriate flags based on content type
- For reading content to stdout (display):
wget -qO- "<URL>" - For downloading files:
wget -O "<filename>" "<URL>" - For JSON API responses:
wget -qO- --header="Accept: application/json" "<URL>" - Common wget flags:
- -q: Quiet mode (no progress output) - -O-: Output to stdout - -O <file>: Output to specific file - --header: Add custom HTTP header - --timeout=<seconds>: Set timeout - --tries=<n>: Number of retries - --user-agent=<agent>: Set user agent
Examples
Example: Read webpage content
Input: "Read the content from https://example.com" Command:
wget -qO- "https://example.com"Example: Download a file
Input: "Download the file from https://example.com/data.json" Command:
wget -O "data.json" "https://example.com/data.json"Example: Fetch API with headers
Input: "Fetch JSON from https://api.example.com/data" Command:
wget -qO- --header="Accept: application/json" "https://api.example.com/data"Example: Download with timeout and retries
Input: "Download with 30 second timeout" Command:
wget --timeout=30 --tries=3 -O "output.txt" "<URL>"Guidelines
Do
- Always quote URLs to handle special characters
- Use
-qflag to suppress progress bars in scripts - Add
--timeoutfor unreliable endpoints - Respect robots.txt and rate limits
Don't
- Use
--no-check-certificateunless necessary - Fetch URLs without validating format first
- Ignore HTTP error codes in responses
- Store credentials in command history