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Alan Thomas wrote:
>         Idea for future wget versions:  It would be nice if I could
> invoke wget programmatically and have options like returning data in
> buffers versus files (so data can be searched and/or manipulated in
> memory),

This can already be done by using wget's -O switch, which directs the
output to a specified file (including standard output). A wrapper
program could simply read wget's stdout directly into a buffer. However,
- -O is only really useful for single downloads, as there is no
delineation between separate files. And, I'll admit that I'm not clear
how easy this is to do with "100% Pure Java"; it's quite straightforward
on Unix systems in most languages.

> or at least getting notification of what files have been
> downloaded (progress).

...progress reports are already issued to standard error; parsing this
wouldn't be too terribly difficult (though it's not currently guaranteed
to be stable across releases). Several programs are already doing this,
AIUI.

> Then it could be more easily and seamlessly
> integrated into other software that needs this capability.  I would
> especially like to be able to invoke wget from Java code. 

It sounds to me like you're asking for a library version of Wget. There
aren't specific plans to support this at the moment, and I'm not sure
how much it'd really buy you: high level programming languages such as
Java, Python, Perl, etc, tend to ship with good HTTP and HTML-parsing
libraries, in which case rigging your own code to do a good chunk of
what Wget does, is probably less work than trying to adapt Wget into
library form. I'm not saying I'm ruling it out, but I'd need to hear
some good cases for it, in contrast to using what's already available on
those platforms.

However, some changes are in the works (early early planning stages) for
Wget to sport a plugin architecture, and if a bit of glue to call out to
higher-level languages is added, plugins written in languages such as
Java wouldn't be a big sretch. It may well be that restructuring Wget as
a library instead of as a standalone app that runs plugins, may be a
better solution; it bears discussion.

Also planned is a more flexible output system, allowing for arbitrary
formatting of downloaded resources (such as .mht's, or tarballs, or
whatever), making delineation in a single output stream possible; also,
a metadata system for preserving information about what files have been
completely downloaded and which were interrupted, what their original
URLs were, etc.

All of this, however, is a long way from even really being started,
especially given our current developer resources.

- --
HTH¸
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/

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