Powershell – How to use wget in PowerShell console with username and password

powershellwget

I have seen couple of answers on SO like this and this. But I always get some error similar to the following.

Not sure what am I doing wrong. I tried with the following variations, but all giving similar error. Please help.

wget --user "My.UserName@gmail.com" --password "MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user="My.UserName@gmail.com" --password="MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user='My.UserName@gmail.com' --password='MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip
wget --user My.UserName@gmail.com --password MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip

Invoke-WebRequest : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument
'--password=MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd'.
At line:1 char:1
+ wget --user='My.UserName@gmail.com' --password='MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd'  ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Invoke-WebRequest], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

Best Answer

It looks like you actually want to run the program wget.exe, but PowerShell has a builtin alias wget for the cmdlet Invoke-WebRequest that takes precedence over an executable, even if the executable is in the PATH. That cmdlet doesn't have parameters --user or --password, which is what causes the error you observed.

You can enforce running the executable by adding its extension, so PowerShell doesn't confuse it with the alias:

wget.exe --user 'My.UserName@gmail.com' --password 'MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip

Note that you should put string literals with special characters like $ in single quotes, otherwise PowerShell would expand something like "MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd" to "MyWhatEver@pas", because the variable $w0rd is undefined.

If you want to use the cmdlet Invoke-WebRequest rather than the wget executable you need to provide credentials via a PSCredential object:

$uri  = 'https://bitbucket.org/WhatEver/WhatEverBranchName/get/master.zip'
$user = 'My.UserName@gmail.com'
$pass = 'MyWhatEver@pas$w0rd' | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = New-Object Management.Automation.PSCredential ($user, $pass)

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -Credential $cred

Related Solutions

How to specify the download location with wget

From the manual page:

-P prefix
--directory-prefix=prefix
           Set directory prefix to prefix.  The directory prefix is the
           directory where all other files and sub-directories will be
           saved to, i.e. the top of the retrieval tree.  The default
           is . (the current directory).

So you need to add -P /tmp/cron_test/ (short form) or --directory-prefix=/tmp/cron_test/ (long form) to your command. Also note that if the directory does not exist it will get created.

Powershell: script to start a program with parameters

Invoke-Command is best suited for running commands remotely. As Shay points out you can use the ampersand & to tell PowerShell to execute something locally just like the cmd.exe shell.

In order to make Invoke-Command work you would need to do something like this:

$program = "C:\windows\system32\ping.exe"
$programArgs = "localhost", "-n", 1
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock { & $program $programArgs }

Notice the use of the the ampersand in the script block. So if you are running a command locally just use the ampersand as Shay's example shows.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to specify the download location with wget

Powershell: script to start a program with parameters

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