gradle-download-task: download files with progress

I really like how Gradle displays progress while it’s fetching artifacts from Maven repositories, but I was always wondering why you cannot use the same functionality when you’re downloading arbitrary files in your build script. Of course, you can use Ant’s download task to fetch files, but it does not display progress information. Since I couldn’t find a solution on the Internet, I decided to write a plugin.

gradle-download-task has initially been released in September 2013 and is now available in version 5.0.0. The plugin contributes a download task that shows progress information just like Gradle does when it fetches artifacts from a repository.

You can use it like this:

task downloadFile(type: Download) {
    src 'https://download.blender.org/peach/bigbuckbunny_movies/big_buck_bunny_720p_stereo.ogg'
    dest buildDir
}

The output will look like this:

In order to use the plugin, you have to add the following lines to your build file:

plugins {
    id "de.undercouch.download" version "5.0.0"
}

You can also use the download extension to retrieve a file anywhere in your build script:

apply plugin: 'download-task'
 
task myTask {
    doLast {
        // do something ...
        // ... then download a file
        download.run {
            src 'http://www.example.com/index.html'
            dest buildDir
        }
        // ... do something else
    }
}

You can also download a list of files to a directory. Please note that you have to specify a directory as destination if you download multiple files. Otherwise, the plugin will fail. Since gradle-download-task 5.0.0, the downloads will be performed in parallel.

task downloadMultipleFiles(type: Download) {
    src([
        'http://www.example.com/index.html',
        'http://www.example.com/test.html'
    ])
    dest buildDir
}

The plugin supports a wide range of other options. Please see the README file for more information.

Happy downloading!

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Posted by Michel Krämer
on 22 March 2014