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wget to download Confluence attachment

wget to download Confluence attachment

How can I use wget to download a Confluence attachment without any plugins?

The command:

wget http://{yourconfluence}/download/attachments/{pageid}/{filename}

Results in an html file rather than the file itself. In my specific case I am trying to download a powerpoint file. If I enter the same URL in a browser, the browser will download the file correctly.

6 answers

1 accepted

1 vote

Answer accepted

Try curl with the -O option. I had success using a command like this:

curl -O -uwilliam:password "http://confluence.mydomain.com/download/attachments/12345678/readme.txt"

Note that I stripped "?api=v2" from the download url. It wasn't necessary in my case and curl will use it in the file name.

This was with Confluence 4.3.7. I have no other version to test.

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Comment

curl with the -O does work with the one Confluence setup that I need it to work with. (Yet it didn't work with another Confluence setup I was testing with). I guess this is the workaround I'll use since wget doesn't seem to work. Thanks.

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Comment

2 votes

Using curl resulted in a zero byte file so I ended up accessing my file this way:

wget --header="Authorization: Basic Z2l0Y29uZmlnQGhh" "https://mysite.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/1841544/US_export_policy.jar"

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Comment

I forgot to mention that I ran the following command to encode the username and password:

printf '%s' 'user:password' | base64

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Comment

This solution worked for me.

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Comment

2 votes

I solved it by using something that seems to be the case for other Atlassian products (ie JIRA)

You need to have the login info in the URL itself.

$client = new-object System.Net.WebClient

$client.DownloadFile("http://Companywiki/download/attachments/211190363/St-1.0.docx?os_username=myusername&os_password=mypassword","D:\St-1.0.docx")

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Comment

also remove any other stuff added after the extension of the file name in the URL

ex: http://mycompanywiki/download/attachments/211190363/St-1.0.docx?version=1&modificationDate=1522908951708?os_username=myusername&os_password=mypassword","D:\St-1.0.docx")

http://mycompanywiki/download/attachments/211190363/St-1.0.docx?os_username=myusername&os_password=mypassword","D:\St-1.0.docx")

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Comment

Tkx a lot !! I searched a while for this

Did you find how to encode the password ?

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Comment

This works, but when works with wget, the downloaded file name will contain ?os_username……

I don't know if there is any convenient wget option to keep the original name "St-1.0.docx"

wget ... -o "St-1.0.docx" is too complicated.

Similarly, ?os_authType=basic has the same issue.

----

Update 1:

Inspired by https://developer.atlassian.com/server/jira/platform/basic-authentication/#construct-the-authorization-header, I found

wget --header="Authorization: Basic <encoded-string-usr:pwd>" <url>

wget --content-disposition <url>\?os_authType=basic (Note: with usr/pwd predefined in ~/.netrc see `man netrc`)

curl -O --header="Authorization: Basic <encoded-string-usr:pwd>" <url>

----

Update 2:

function jiraget {
 wget --no-check-certificate --content-disposition "$1?os_authType=basic"
}

Then we can `jiraget <file_url>`

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Comment

1 vote

Was this ever resolved??

No. the command aboved marked solved does NOT work.

I am getting exactly the same issue.

Where file downloaded (supposed to be a .doc) starts with <!DOCTYPE html>

The file size is much smaller. And if I manually change the file to be .html, it goes into a cached page of what looks like the login page. So the credentials are not getting transferred.

Works fine on other site ie:

This works.

wget -O my.pdf "https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vbscript/vbscript_tutorial.pdf"

But this doesn't work

wget -O my.pdf --user user --password mypassword "http://tsm-wiki/download/attachments/38897186/Al%27s+comments.doc?version=1&modificationDate=1351755856000"

Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers.

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Comment

1 vote

Give it the user name and password for someone who can see the page, and the url for the attachment you're trying to get. wget user:pass http://yourconfluence/pathtoattachment basically

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Comment

It is not a permissions issue. Using

wget http://yourconfluence/downloads/attachments/pageid/filename

Results in an html file rather than the file itself.

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Comment

You did not explain that in the original question. You only asked how you use wget and I told you.

Now you've changed the question to something totally different, I can try again, although the answer is basically the same - hit the url for the file with wget and a username and password.

The problem you're having is probably that the url is wrong (download, not downloads) and you may need to add the api version to it by adding &api=2 to the end.

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Comment

Yes, I changed the question in hopes of making the issue clearer.

Fixing the misspelling (downloads --> download) and adding the &api=2 still did not work. Tried adding a ?api=2 as well. All resulted in an html page.

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Comment

OK, you're doing something differently to me then. I get the file I ask for.

Two further questions -

What do you get when you use a browser to hit the same link?
When wget fetches html, what does it actually say? Open the file in a browser?

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Comment

Using chrome, I pasted the URL in the address bar and I get the "Save As" dialog box. When I've saved the selection, I am able to open the file (in this case a powerpoint).
When wget fetches the same URL, it logs that it is connecting, then saving to the filename, then 100% complete, and then the file size which is much smaller than the size of the powerpoint. I've also tried using curl -O URL with the same result as the wget command.

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Comment

Ok, great, so the browser is getting the right file. So I don't know why wget doesn't. What does the file that wget actually saves say?

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Comment

The saved file has the same filename as it the attachment (ie. filename.ppt). It won't open in powerpoint, but I can open it in notepad and it starts with "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC". If I manually change the extension to .html and open it in a browser, the page looks like a Confluence log-in page. I guess this means the username and password that is part of the wget command line isn't being transferred over to Confluence's login request?

In a new browser, entering the URL does ask me for the username and password (didn't notice it before since I was already logged into Confluence).

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Comment

Yes, that's correct - you aren't logged in, so Confluence serves up a login page (in html) to ask the process to log in. How are you doing the username:password part of the wget?

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Comment

wget --user myname --password mypassword URL

(just a side note, I'm limited to 3 responses per day since I am new to the forum)

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Comment

0 votes

wget is also not working for me. I get a small file with html in it instead of the file I want.

If I try to put the username and password in the URL as one user suggested, I get "Permission denied".

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wget to download Confluence attachment

6 answers

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