Windows batch file file download from a URL

With PowerShell 2.0 (Windows 7 preinstalled) you can use:

(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://www.example.com/package.zip', 'package.zip')

Starting with PowerShell 3.0 (Windows 8 preinstalled) you can use Invoke-WebRequest:

Invoke-WebRequest http://www.example.com/package.zip -OutFile package.zip

From a batch file they are called:

powershell -Command "(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('http://www.example.com/package.zip', 'package.zip')"
powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest http://www.example.com/package.zip -OutFile package.zip"

(PowerShell 2.0 is available for installation on XP, 3.0 for Windows 7)

There's a standard Windows component which can achieve what you're trying to do: BITS. It has been included in Windows since XP and 2000 SP3.

Run:

bitsadmin.exe /transfer "JobName" http://download.url/here.exe C:\destination\here.exe

The job name is simply the display name for the download job - set it to something that describes what you're doing.

This might be a little off topic, but you can pretty easily download a file using Powershell. Powershell comes with modern versions of Windows so you don't have to install any extra stuff on the computer. I learned how to do it by reading this page:

http://teusje.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/download-file-with-powershell/

The code was:

$webclient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$url = "http://www.example.com/file.txt"
$file = "$pwd\file.txt"
$webclient.DownloadFile($url,$file)

Last I checked, there isn't a command line command to connect to a URL from the MS command line. Try wget for Windows:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

or URL2File:
http://www.chami.com/free/url2file_wincon.html

In Linux, you can use "wget".

Alternatively, you can try VBScript. They are like command line programs, but they are scripts interpreted by the wscript.exe scripts host. Here is an example of downloading a file using VBS:
https://serverfault.com/questions/29707/download-file-from-vbscript