Can we wget with file list and renaming destination files? - wget

Question

I have this wget command:
sudo wget --user-agent='some-agent' --referer=http://some-referrer.html -N -r -nH --cut-dirs=x --timeout=xxx --directory-prefix=/directory/for/downloaded/files -i list-of-files-to-download.txt
-N will check if there is actually a newer file to download.
-r will turn the recursive retrieving on.
-nH will disable the generation of host-prefixed directories.
--cut-dirs=X will avoid the generation of the host's subdirectories.
--timeout=xxx will, well, timeout :)
--directory-prefix will store files in the desired directorty.
This works nice, no problem.
Now, to the issue:
Let's say my files-to-download.txt has these kind of files:
http://website/directory1/picture-same-name.jpg
http://website/directory2/picture-same-name.jpg
http://website/directory3/picture-same-name.jpg
etc...
You can see the problem: on the second download, wget will see we already have a picture-same-name.jpg, so it won't download the second or any of the following ones with the same name. I cannot mirror the directory structure because I need all the downloaded files to be in the same directory. I can't use the -O option because it clashes with --N, and I need that. I've tried to use -nd, but doesn't seem to work for me.
So, ideally, I need to be able to:
a.- wget from a list of url's the way I do now, keeping my parameters.
b.- get all files at the same directory and being able to rename each file.
Does anybody have any solution to this?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I would suggest 2 approaches -
Use the "-nc" or the "--no-clobber" option. From the man page -
-nc
--no-clobber
If a file is downloaded more than once in the same directory, >Wget's behavior depends on a few options, including -nc. In certain >cases, the local file will be
clobbered, or overwritten, upon repeated download. In other >cases it will be preserved.
When running Wget without -N, -nc, -r, or -p, downloading the >same file in the same directory will result in the original copy of file >being preserved and the second copy
being named file.1. If that file is downloaded yet again, the >third copy will be named file.2, and so on. (This is also the behavior >with -nd, even if -r or -p are in
effect.) When -nc is specified, this behavior is suppressed, >and Wget will refuse to download newer copies of file. Therefore, ""no->clobber"" is actually a misnomer in
this mode---it's not clobbering that's prevented (as the >numeric suffixes were already preventing clobbering), but rather the >multiple version saving that's prevented.
When running Wget with -r or -p, but without -N, -nd, or -nc, >re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply overwriting the >old. Adding -nc will prevent this
behavior, instead causing the original version to be preserved >and any newer copies on the server to be ignored.
When running Wget with -N, with or without -r or -p, the >decision as to whether or not to download a newer copy of a file depends >on the local and remote timestamp and
size of the file. -nc may not be specified at the same time as >-N.
A combination with -O/--output-document is only accepted if the >given output file does not exist.
Note that when -nc is specified, files with the suffixes .html >or .htm will be loaded from the local disk and parsed as if they had been >retrieved from the Web.
As you can see from this man page entry, the behavior might be unpredictable/unexpected. You will need to see if it works for you.
Another approach would be to use a bash script. I am most comfortable using bash on *nix, so forgive the platform dependency. However the logic is sound, and with a bit of modifications, you can get it to work on other platforms/scripts as well.
Sample pseudocode bash script -
for i in `cat list-of-files-to-download.txt`;
do
wget <all your flags except the -i flag> $i -O /path/to/custom/directory/filename ;
done ;
You can modify the script to download each file to a temporary file, parse $i to get the filename from the URL, check if the file exists on the disk, and then take a decision to rename the temp file to the name that you want.
This offers much more control over your downloads.