downloading and storing files from given url to given path in lua

Question

I'm new with lua but working on an application that works on specific files with given path. Now, I want to work on files that I download. Is there any lua libraries or line of codes that I can use for downloading and storing it on my computer ?

Answer 1

You can use the LuaSocket library and its http.request function to download using HTTP from an URL.

The function has two flavors:

• Simple call: http.request('http://stackoverflow.com')
• Advanced call: http.request { url = 'http://stackoverflow.com', ... }

The simple call returns 4 values - the entire content of the URL in a string, HTTP response code, headers and response line. You can then save the content to a file using the io library.

The advanced call allows you to set several parameters like HTTP method and headers. An important parameter is sink. It represents a LTN12-style sink. For storing to file, you can use sink.file:

local file = ltn12.sink.file(io.open('stackoverflow', 'w'))
http.request {
    url = 'http://stackoverflow.com',
    sink = file,
}