Program to download an XML file

January 23, 2013 6:28 PM

We are trying to manually download a dropshipper's XML file of products. The file size is over 22MB and I can't open it in my web browsers Internet Explorer or FireFox (both latest). I tried asking them if they could allow me to read the directory the file's on so I could right click on it and download it manually but they refuse to do so. They told me I need to use an external program to download this XML file. I tried looking but with no luck. Could someone please help me. Thank you so much...
posted by Bacillus to computers & internet (8 answers total)

Are you using Windows?
posted by aaronbeekay at 6:34 PM on January 23

You want curl. Download it for the workstation of your choice, and you can use it on the command line, along the lines of this:

curl http://somehost.com/path/to/that/troublesome/file.xml

...and it'll download with a little progress bar and everything. Very useful tool, curl.
posted by jquinby at 6:35 PM on January 23 [3 favorites]

Another tool for this sort of thing is wget, which you'd use like so:

wget http://somehost.com/path/to/that/troublesome/file.xml

Curl has more doodads and features, but wget works just fine too.
posted by jquinby at 6:39 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

the easiest way to do this sort of thing is email yourself the link. then you can right-click and download. i used to do this for annoying mp3 links all the time.
posted by noloveforned at 6:52 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

If you don't want to download software for this,

1. open up notepad or your text editor of choice

2. add

<a href="http://yourlink">download</a>

to the file

3. File -> save as -> test.html

4. doubleclick on this file to open it in your browser

5. rightclick -> save as like usual
posted by xiw at 7:49 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

On a Mac you can paste the URL of the file into the little Downloads window in either Firefox or Safari, and it will just start downloading. Does the same thing not work in Windows?
posted by bcwinters at 8:32 PM on January 23

http://www.linksave.net/ ???
posted by Mr. Papagiorgio at 8:40 PM on January 23

In windows notepad do File > Open then paste the url. Then Save As to save the xml.
posted by paulash at 11:36 PM on January 23