electron-download-manager

Manage downloadItems from Electron's BrowserWindows without user interaction, allowing single file download and bulk downloading asynchronously

Why?

• Register global listener that attaches to all newly created BrowserWindow instances
• Automatically download the file to a given folder, without user prompt
• Callback when download has completed (or failed)
• Bulk download: pass a bunch of links and all will get downloaded, with a callback once they're all done.

Install

$ npm install electron-download-manager

Usage

Register it for all windows

Register the listener (that will catch all DownloadItems)

1const electron = require("electron");
2const { app, BrowserWindow } = electron;
3
4const DownloadManager = require("electron-download-manager");
5
6DownloadManager.register();
7
8app.on("ready", () => {
9    let mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
10});

Examples

After registering you must wait until at least 1 window is created to call DownloadManager.download function

Single file download from the Main Process

1const electron = require("electron");
2const { app, BrowserWindow } = electron;
3
4const DownloadManager = require("electron-download-manager");
5
6DownloadManager.register({
7    downloadFolder: app.getPath("downloads") + "/my-app"
8});
9
10app.on("ready", () => {
11
12    let mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
13
14    mainWindow.loadURL(`file://${__dirname}/app/index.html`);
15
16    //Single file download
17    DownloadManager.download({
18        url: "https://i.imgur.com/H124sSq.jpg"
19    }, function (error, info) {
20        if (error) {
21            console.log(error);
22            return;
23        }
24
25        console.log("DONE: " + info.url);
26    });
27
28});

This example downloads https://i.imgur.com/H124sSq.jpg file to user-downloads-folder/my-app/H124sSq.jpg

Bulk file download from the Main Process

1const electron = require("electron");
2const {app, BrowserWindow} = electron;
3
4const DownloadManager = require("electron-download-manager");
5
6DownloadManager.register({downloadFolder: app.getPath("downloads") + "/my-app"});;
7
8app.on("ready", () => {
9    let mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
10
11    mainWindow.loadURL(`file://${__dirname}/app/index.html`);
12
13    var links = [
14        "https://i.imgur.com/xineeuw.jpg",
15        "https://i.imgur.com/RguiWa6.jpg",
16        "https://i.imgur.com/JR4Z0aD.jpg",
17        "https://i.imgur.com/ccvEJO1.jpg",
18        "https://i.imgur.com/yqZoShd.jpg"
19    ];
20
21    //Bulk file download    
22    DownloadManager.bulkDownload({
23        urls: links,
24        path: "bulk-download"
25    }, function (error, finished, errors) {
26        if (error) {
27            console.log("finished: " + finished);
28            console.log("errors: " + errors);
29            return;
30        }
31
32        console.log("all finished");
33    });
34
35});
36
37

This example downloads 5 files to user-downloads-folder/my-app/bulk-downloads

Use from Renderer Process

Once you've registered the listener on the Main process at any time you can call the download function through electron's remote

1require("electron").remote.require("electron-download-manager").download({
2    url: "https://i.imgur.com/H124sSq.jpg"
3}, function (error, info) {
4    if (error) {
5        console.log(error);
6        return;
7    }
8
9    console.log("DONE: " + info.url);
10});

API

DownloadManager.register([options])

options

downloadFolder

Type: string
Default: app.getPath("downloads")]

Set a folder where all downloadItems will be downloaded to. It will also be the parent folder for individual folders of each download. Explained below in Download function.

By default, this "root" folder will be user's OS downloads folder (read about this)

If the file already exists in the location it will check the file's size against the size on the server, if it is lower than the server it will attempt to resume downloading the file. This is good for downloading large files. E.G Downloading a 200MB file and only 100MB downloaded (app closed/crashed) it will resume the download from where it left off automatically.

If the file size on the disk is the same as the server it will not download and return a successful callback.

DownloadManager.download(options, callback(error, {url, filePath}))

options

url

Type: string

The url of the file to be downloaded

path

Type: string
Default: ""

Set a folder where this downloadItems will be downloaded to. This folder is relative to downloadFolder location set in the register function. By default it will be downloaded to root of downloadFolder which would be user download's folder.

onLogin(authInfo, callback)

Type: function

Emitted when an authenticating proxy is asking for user credentials.

1    DownloadManager.download({
2        url: "https://i.imgur.com/H124sSq.jpg",
3        onLogin: (authInfo, callback) => {
4            callback('username', 'password');
5        },
6    }, function (error, info) {
7        if (error) {
8            console.log(error);
9            return;
10        }
11
12        console.log("DONE: " + info.url);
13    });
14

Please see Class ClientRequest's 'login' event for detail.

onProgress(progress, item)

Type: function

A function to be called whenever the file being downloaded progresses, this function will be constantly called with the updated value.

progress an object with various metrics for the downloading file

{
    downloaded          // downloaded amount in ['Bytes', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB', 'PB', 'EB', 'ZB', 'YB']
    downloadedBytes     // same as previous only in bytes for calculation if required (eg. 4061073)
    progress            // float progress of downloaing file (0 to 100)
    remaining           // remaining amount of file download in ['Bytes', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB', 'PB', 'EB', 'ZB', 'YB'] (eg. 28.36 MB)
    remainingBytes      // same as previous only in bytes for calculation if required (eg. 28360919)
    speed               // download speed (eg. 311.3 KB/sec)
    speedBytes          // same as previous only in bytes for calculation if required (eg. 311296)
    total               // file size in ['Bytes', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB', 'PB', 'EB', 'ZB', 'YB'] (eg. 32.42 MB)
    totalBytes          // same as previous only in bytes for calculation if required (eg. 32421992)
    }

item instance of DownloadItem class. Useful for pausing and cancelling among other things.

This feature currently exists only for single file downloads and hasn't been implemented (yet) for bulk processing.

callback(error, {url, filePath})

Callback to be called when the download has reached a "done" state, which could mean two things either it was successful, or it failed.

if the download was successful the callback's error will be null, otherwise it will contain the error message

url returns the url of the downloaded file
filePath location of where the file was saved

DownloadManager.bulkDownload(options, callback(error, finished, failed))

options

urls

Type: array

Array of url strings of the files to be downloaded

path

Type: string
Default: ""

Set a path to save all the bulk downloaded files. This folder is relative to downloadFolder location set in the register function. By default it will be downloaded to root of downloadFolder which would be user download's folder.

onResult(finishedCount, errorsCount, itemUrl)

Type: function

A function to be called whenever a file has been downloaded or whenever a download failed.

finishedCount integer. Represents the number of file successfully downloaded. example: 4

errorsCount integer. Represents the number of file that couldn't be downloaded. example: 5

itemUrl string. Represents the url of the item.

This feature is really different as the onProgress feature for single files as it doesn't take the size in the calculation.

callback(error, finished, failed)

Callback to be executed when all downloadItems in this bulk process have been completed

error will be null if everything was successful
finished is an array containing the url of successfully downloaded items
failed is an array containing the url of failed downloaded items (if any)

Questions

Feel free to open Issues to ask questions about using this module, PRs are very welcome and encouraged.

License

MIT © Daniel Nieto, loosely based on code from Sindre Sorhus