There is an online HTTP directory that I have access to. I have tried to download all sub-directories and files via wget. But, the problem is that when wget downloads sub-directories it downloads the index.html file which contains the list of files in that directory without downloading the files themselves.
Is there a way to download the sub-directories and files without depth limit (as if the directory I want to download is just a folder which I want to copy to my computer).
Solution:
wget -r -np -nH --cut-dirs=3 -R index.html http://hostname/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/
Explanation:
-r : recursively -np : not going to upper directories, like ccc/…-nH : not saving files to hostname folder --cut-dirs=3 : but saving it to ddd by omitting
first 3 folders aaa, bbb, ccc-R index.html : excluding index.html
files 
name.pdf name2.pdf image1.png name3.pdf...` and I wish to download all the listed documents (in the href). – user305883 Jan 31 '19 at 08:57
I was able to get this to work thanks to this post utilizing VisualWGet. It worked great for me. The important part seems to be to check the -recursive flag (see image).
Also found that the -no-parent flag is important, othewise it will try to download everything.
you can use lftp, the swish army knife of downloading if you have bigger files you can add --use-pget-n=10 to command
lftp -c 'mirror --parallel=100 https://example.com/files/ ;exit'
wget -r -np -nH --cut-dirs=3 -R index.html http://hostname/aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/
From man wget
‘-r’ ‘--recursive’ Turn on recursive retrieving. See Recursive Download, for more details. The default maximum depth is 5.
‘-np’ ‘--no-parent’ Do not ever ascend to the parent directory when retrieving recursively. This is a useful option, since it guarantees that only the files below a certain hierarchy will be downloaded. See Directory-Based Limits, for more details.
‘-nH’ ‘--no-host-directories’ Disable generation of host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking Wget with ‘-r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/’ will create a structure of directories beginning with fly.srk.fer.hr/. This option disables such behavior.
‘--cut-dirs=number’ Ignore number directory components. This is useful for getting a fine-grained control over the directory where recursive retrieval will be saved.
Take, for example, the directory at ‘ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/’. If you retrieve it with ‘-r’, it will be saved locally under ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/. While the ‘-nH’ option can remove the ftp.xemacs.org/ part, you are still stuck with pub/xemacs. This is where ‘--cut-dirs’ comes in handy; it makes Wget not “see” number remote directory components. Here are several examples of how ‘--cut-dirs’ option works.
No options -> ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/ -nH -> pub/xemacs/ -nH --cut-dirs=1 -> xemacs/ -nH --cut-dirs=2 -> .
--cut-dirs=1 -> ftp.xemacs.org/xemacs/ ... If you just want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is similar to a combination of ‘-nd’ and ‘-P’. However, unlike ‘-nd’, ‘--cut-dirs’ does not lose with subdirectories—for instance, with ‘-nH --cut-dirs=1’, a beta/ subdirectory will be placed to xemacs/beta, as one would expect.
(only usable if you don't need recursive deptch)
Use bookmarklet. Drag this link in bookmarks, then edit and paste this code:
javascript:(function(){ var arr=[], l=document.links; var ext=prompt("select extension for download (all links containing that, will be downloaded.", ".mp3"); for(var i=0; i<l.length; i++) { if(l[i].href.indexOf(ext) !== false){ l[i].setAttribute("download",l[i].text); l[i].click(); } } })();
and go on page (from where you want to download files), and click that bookmarklet.
wget is an invaluable resource and something I use myself. However sometimes there are characters in the address that wget identifies as syntax errors. I'm sure there is a fix for that, but as this question did not ask specifically about wget I thought I would offer an alternative for those people who will undoubtedly stumble upon this page looking for a quick fix with no learning curve required.
There are a few browser extensions that can do this, but most require installing download managers, which aren't always free, tend to be an eyesore, and use a lot of resources. Heres one that has none of these drawbacks:
"Download Master" is an extension for Google Chrome that works great for downloading from directories. You can choose to filter which file-types to download, or download the entire directory.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/download-master/dljdacfojgikogldjffnkdcielnklkce
For an up-to-date feature list and other information, visit the project page on the developer's blog:
You can use this Firefox addon to download all files in HTTP Directory.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/http-directory-downloader/
wget generally works in this way, but some sites may have problems and it may create too many unnecessary html files. In order to make this work easier and to prevent unnecessary file creation, I am sharing my getwebfolder script, which is the first linux script I wrote for myself. This script downloads all content of a web folder entered as parameter.
When you try to download an open web folder by wget which contains more then one file, wget downloads a file named index.html. This file contains a file list of the web folder. My script converts file names written in index.html file to web addresses and downloads them clearly with wget.
Tested at Ubuntu 18.04 and Kali Linux, It may work at other distros as well.
Usage :
extract getwebfolder file from zip file provided below
chmod +x getwebfolder (only for first time)
./getwebfolder webfolder_URLsuch as ./getwebfolder http://example.com/example_folder/
