How can I specify that curl (via command line) overwrites a file if it already exists?

Question

I'm using curl in this syntax:

curl -o myfile.jpg http://example.com/myfile.jpg

If I run this command twice, I get two files:

myfile.jpg
myfile-1.jpg

How can I tell Curl that I want it to overwrite the file if it exists?

Answer 1

Instead of using -o option to write to a file, use your shell to direct the output to the file:

curl http://example.com/myfile.jpg > myfile.jpg

Answer 2

Pass --clobber. This also covers server-provided filename when using -J.

Answer 3

I had same problem, and I wanted to reuse the same filename regardless of what the server-side returns. In your case, you can get the filename with basename:

➸ basename 'http://example.com/myfile.jpg'
myfile.jpg

Then you can write a helper Bash function like:

➸ function download { name="$(basename $1)"; curl "$1" > "$name"; }
➸ download 'http://example.com/myfile.jpg'

In my case, however, the filename is not even part of the URL; it comes with the Content-Disposition header. With Curl the command line is:

➸ curl -fSL -R -J -O 'http://example.com/getData.php?arg=1&arg2=...'

You may ignore the -fSL if you want -- It handles if the server-side returns 302 Redirection. The relevant flags here are:

• -R for server-side timestamp
• -J to consider server-side Content-Disposition
• -O to switch to download behavior instead of dumping on terminal

However, it still suffers from refusing to overwrite if file name exists. I want it to overwrite if server side Last-Modified timestamp is newer.

So I end up with a wget solution that's able to do so:

➸ wget -NS --content-disposition 'http://example.com/getData.php?arg=1&arg2=...'

• -N is to check server side timestamp and overwrite only when server side has new version
• --content-disposition is to consider the Content-Disposition header
• wget's default behavior is to download, to the filename given from server side.

In your case, if you don't care about the timestamp, it's just:

➸ wget -O myfile.jpg http://example.com/myfile.jpg