Uncompress file from URL to hard disk?

If unzip would have adhered to the pipes and filters architectural style characteristic of Unix, then one would expect to be able to do this by piping the output of wget into the input of unzip:

wget -O - http://www.test.com/test.zip | (cd destination-folder && unzip -)

Where the the dash after -O means standard output, the dash after unzip means standard input and the parenthesised right hand side starts a subshell in the correct directory.

However the ZIP format stores its contents index at the end of the file, and unzip needs to read this before it can start decompressing. So, contrary to gzip et al, it cannot decompress a stream in one pass.

As a workaround you need a temporary file:

wget -O /tmp/z.$$ http://www.test.com/test.zip && 
   (cd destination-folder && unzip /tmp/z.$$)

Where the $$ are just used to generate a non-colliding number.

Instead of running the subshell, you could use the -d option of unzip. And for added hygiene, clean up your temporary file:

wget -O /tmp/z.$$ http://www.test.com/test.zip && 
   unzip -d destination-folder /tmp/z.$$ &&
   rm /tmp/z.$$

You need more than one step:

1. Go into your destination folder

   cd destination
   

2. Download the file

   wget www.test.com/test.zip
   

3. Extract the file

   unzip test.zip
   

To use only one command use a script:

#!/bin/bash
wget -P "/tmp" "$1"
filename=$(awk -F'/' {print $NF})
unzip "$filename" -d "$2"
rm "/tmp/$filename"

• Open an editor to create a new file called unzip_by_url and put it either in ~/bin or /usr/bin/local

  nano unzip_by_url
  

• And paste the code above.

• Save and close and

• Make the file executable

  chmod +x /path/to/file/unzip_by_url
  

• Now start the script with:

  unzip_by_url www.test.com/test.zip destination-folder-on-my-pc