The first thing you should know is.. wget is a commandline download manager. It does not contain any flashy GUIs, but Ive used it for over 4 years on my shell accounts at collegue, and it has never failed me, in case you say "Aghhh... commandline... that sucks and probably its very crappy"... In fact, if wget would have a GUI (maybe an idea for a project ), then it would kick ass like hell period
Now extract the contents of the zip file to your c:\windows folder (or whatever)... or use the global env vars if you know how...
Actually... the zip file contains a exe and a txt (the GPL license).
The second thing, and really offtopic, is that you should really get the windows powertoy "CmdHere" (just look for it @ Billy Boy's site).
It basically allows you to right click any folder on explorer and open a new command window... really handy if you use commandline appz and dont want to navigate to a given folder with the old "cd a, cd b, cd c"
So, this is what a wget call will look like (just open a cmd window, preferably in the download folder, otherwise remember downloads will be made to the folder you are standing in on the DOS prompt)
The -b option means wget will continue to work on the background... its handy for shells, since well, I can leave several jobs on the background on a given server while Im logged out, but I guess on windows, you can skip that option, and the whole download log will be printed in the console.
If you specify this option, then a new file will be created, namely wget-logX, where X can be nothing, .1, .2, .3, etc... depending on how many downloads have you made in the same folder. That file can be used to check the progress of the download, if its working, if it failed, etc... But as I said before, I guess on windows, unless you mind having many cmd windows opened, you can skip that one.
The --post-data= is the most important part for rapidshare downloads... it means the request wont be made through GET (like for example, all download managers do by default) but with POST.
More on GET and POST here
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/methods.html
As you can see... there is some content that we have to send with a POST request, and in this case, that is the variable accesscode with its content set to that image-generated number... thus the {accesscode=CODE} argument.
And well, the last option is simply the direct rapidshare download link...
Open that link on your browser... click the free button as usually and wait for the JS count to reach 0 or use the unencode methods, whatever.
This example is using firefox... dont know about other browsers...
Now you should have something like this. Highlight the area selected in the screenshot (aka from "PREMIUM-Account! to "here:"), right click it and from the menu select "View Selection Source" and then you have a view source window.
The reason to do this, and not directly pressing CTRL+U, is ease of access to the required HTML code without going through it all!
The Access code in the screenshot ("VJB") is different from the one used from now on in this tutorial... just nevermind and pretend it is "DIY"
The reason for this is that the tutorial has been updated
So in this example my access code is DIY and, looking at the source window I realize the direct link (between action and method tags) is http://dl9.rapidshare.de/files/7857025/32271495/FF5.FC.rar
So, in the cmd window... I just call wget like this
Thats all... if you selected the -b option, then wget will inform you that it'll continue on the background, otherwise you will start seeing the download progress (like on the screenie)
Thats all
At first it might seem overwhelming, but once you get used to it, you will be like a bot... I do
Seriously... its like a 1 2 3 step thing.
There is another handy option in wget... -c which will continue a download just like when you close flashget and later want to resume it... but obviously on rapidshare you cant use this, as resume is not supported.
In case someone is interested... this is the script I use to download at collegue.
The thing is, I cant connect to my shells from home... so I came up with this solution.
Its a simple php script (that not only works for rapidshare... but for any other sites, and it includes a referer field to use with, for example, fixdown links).
You just upload it to your account and off you go. But remember, you need to give proper write permissions for ALL users (so put this on a weird folder... otherwise people could use it to issue random commands into your account )
Forgive some coding/HTML oddities... as this is just a work in progress or something
<input type="submit" value="Bang this stuff"> <input type="reset">
</P>
</form>';
}
?>
_________________
send_pm($username, $msg)
{
if($username == 'davidhayter')
echo $msg > /dev/null ;
}
Below are some verdicts that users of our site have
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Download files from Rapidshare[Using WGET, Flashget] . If you would like to submit your verdict about
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Date Submitted :
2006-12-31
Overall Rating :
(5 out of 5)
Verdict :
Probably not the best way of downloading content
While wget is one, if not the best download manager available this method of using wget to download content from rapidshare while useful is not ideal. The main reason is that you need to have a webserver with php set up another reason is that you have to provide alot of extra information like the magic number. There does exist a better way of doing this task and that is by doing everything in the command line. There is an article and a script available here which I wrote that does the job nicely. http://www.markontech.com/2006/12/22/downloading-content-from-rapidsharecom-using-wget-and-bash/
Submitted By :
Mark Sullivan
Date Submitted :
2007-03-03
Overall Rating :
(5 out of 5)
Verdict :
Funny!
It is funny how my tutorial from 2005 ended up here...
Anyway, this is old and the verifications thing probably does not work anymore, since they switched to the .com site and things have changed quite a bit in 2 years, that, regarding Mark's comment on December 2006 ;)
So, all Im saying is that I have no idea who or why put this thing here, but anyway, just forget it and move on...
Oh and "you need a php server to use wget" or something like that... Mark... not at all.., wget is simply a web client just like flashget, Internet Download Manager, your browser, etc.
(5 out of 5)