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download()

download(url [, saveAs, headers, callback])

Downloads a distant file to your agent's disk (not to your persistent storage).

If you do not save the file to your persistent storage (see buster.save() or buster.saveFolder()), it will be lost when your agent exits.

— url (String)

URL of the file to be downloaded.

  • https://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo11w.png
  • http://soundcloud.com/ (you'll get the HTML content of their homepage)

— saveAs (String)

Where to put the file on your agent's disk (optional).
By default, the name will be taken from url and the file will be saved in the current working directory on your agent's disk.
If a file with the same name already exists, it is overwritten.

  • foo/ (saves http://example.com/baz/bar.png as foo/bar.png)
  • null (saves http://example.com/foo/bar.png as bar.png)
  • foo/ (fails on http://example.com/ with could not determine filename)
  • foo/a (saves http://example.com/bar.png as foo/a)

Intermediate directories are not created automatically on your agent's disk. When using NodeJS, create directories beforehand with require('fs').mkdirSync().

— headers (Plain Object)

HTTP headers to use when requesting the file (optional).
Cookies are automatically set when using CasperJS or PhantomJS.

— callback (Function(err, path))

Function called when finished (optional).

  • err (String): null or a description of what went wrong if something went wrong (typically if there was a network error or timeout).
  • path (String): the path to the file on your agent's disk.

📘

Using NodeJS?

When running NodeJS within Phantombuster (the recommended binary), you also have access to common HTTP request modules such as request, needle and fetch. They can come in handy! See packages & modules.

const url = "https://phantombuster.com"
const saveAs = "phantombuster.html"
const headers = {
  "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
  "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0"
}

try {
  const path = await buster.download(url, saveAs, headers)
  console.log("File successfully download here:", path)
  //The file is saved on the disk at this path, you can only access it inside the script
} catch (err) {
	console.log("Could not download the file:", err)
}

const url = "https://phantombuster.com"
const saveAs = "phantombuster.html"
const headers = {
  "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
  "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0"
}

await buster.download(url, saveAs, headers)
.then((path) => {
  console.log("File successfully download here:", path)
  //The file is saved on the disk at this path, you can only access it inside the script
})
.catch((err) => {
	console.log("Could not download the file:", err)
})

var url = "https://phantombuster.com"
var saveAs = "phantombuster.html"
var headers = {
  "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
  "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0"
}

await buster.download(url, saveAs, headers, function(err, path) {
	if (err) {
    console.log("Could not download the file:", err)
  } else {
    console.log("File successfully download here:", path)
    //The file is saved on the disk at this path, you can only access it inside the script
  }
})

🚧

Note

This file will be only accessible from your script when it is running. If you want to keep the file in your persistent storage, use buster.save() or buster.saveFolder() or similar.