Foolish IT has released fGet, a freeware portable tool which enables downloading files from a script.

The program uses Internet Explorer components to handle the tricky bits, which means the fGet executable can be a tiny 51.1KB.

Basic usage is simple, requiring only a /url switch to specify what you’d like to download, and a /file switch for the name and path where you’d like it saved.

The end result looks something like this.

fget /url=”http://www.domain.com/path/file.zip” /file=”c:\archives\latest.zip”

Optional switches allow you to specify a user name, password or custom referring URL.

/rurl=[spoof/referring url]
/user=[username]
/pass=[password]

What you don’t get is much – okay, any – help in dealing with problems or exceptions. FGet doesn’t check to see if the local file you specify already exists, it won’t create the destination path if it’s not already there, and there are no status messages to indicate progress or errors.

If your scripting needs are basic then this probably won’t be an issue, and fGet worked without any difficulty for us.

But if you’d like more download scripting power then cUrl supports lots of protocols, can upload files, resume transfers, set upper or lower transfer speed limits or more, and it’s also very straightforward to use.

FGet is a freeware application for Windows XP and later.