Question

How do I download a file with Node.js without using third-party libraries?

I don’t need anything special. I only want to download a file from a given URL, and then save it to a given directory.

Answer 1

As of Node 18, you can use the built-in fetch global, which implements the Fetch API to download data with several methods built in to directly work with the result as plain text, JS-converted-from-JSON, or binary data (as ArrayBuffer).

For older versions of Node, you can create an HTTP GET request and pipe its response into a writable file stream:

const http = require('http'); // or 'https' for https:// URLs
const fs = require('fs');

const file = fs.createWriteStream("file.jpg");
const request = http.get("http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/J---aiyznGQ/mqdefault.jpg", function(response) {
   response.pipe(file);

   // after download completed close filestream
   file.on("finish", () => {
       file.close();
       console.log("Download Completed");
   });
});

If you want to support gathering information on the command line–like specifying a target file or directory, or URL–check out something like Commander.

More detailed explanation in https://sebhastian.com/nodejs-download-file/