How to download an image using Node.js
THE AHA STACK MASTERCLASS
Launching May 27th
How do you download a file?
I asked myself this question when I had to download a file from a server, programmatically.
I had to connect to a server, download a file, and store it locally.
This is the code I used:
const fs = require('fs')
const request = require('request')
const download = (url, path, callback) => {
request.head(url, (err, res, body) => {
request(url)
.pipe(fs.createWriteStream(path))
.on('close', callback)
})
}
const url = 'https://…'
const path = './images/image.png'
download(url, path, () => {
console.log('✅ Done!')
})
The code uses the fs
built-in module and the request
module.
request
must be installed:
npm install request
Note that the request
module was recently deprecated, which means it’s “complete” and no new changes will be applied to it. Only fixes. It doesn’t mean it will stop working and it does not mean we should stop using it.
→ Get my Node.js Handbook
I wrote 20 books to help you become a better developer:
- Astro Handbook
- HTML Handbook
- Next.js Pages Router Handbook
- Alpine.js Handbook
- HTMX Handbook
- TypeScript Handbook
- React Handbook
- SQL Handbook
- Git Cheat Sheet
- Laravel Handbook
- Express Handbook
- Swift Handbook
- Go Handbook
- PHP Handbook
- Python Handbook
- Linux Commands Handbook
- C Handbook
- JavaScript Handbook
- CSS Handbook
- Node.js Handbook