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How to download an image using Node.js

Published Apr 07 2020

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.