This icon downloads a file from a given URL. By default the result is cached, but a target path can also be specified in order to save the file directly to a given location. This is particularly useful for data types that Metview does not have specific support for. Note that Download will use the proxy settings defined by Metview - these are configurable via the Tools | Preferences menu.

The macro language equivalent is download().

The Download Editor

Url

Provide a URL that  will return a file. This can be, for instance, a URL that points directly to a particular file, or a request to a web service that generates and returns some data.

Target

This parameter is optional. If set, the downloaded file will be copied to the given location. The target path can be absolute or relative, but must include the file name, and the parent directory must already exist. If running from an interactive session, a relative path will be relative to the folder containing the macro; when running in batch mode, the path will be relative to where the metview command was run from.

Example usage

# download the data and assign to a variable
data = download(url : "http://download.ecmwf.org/test-data/metview/gallery/2m_temperature.grib")
print('Values range from ', minvalue(data), ' to ', maxvalue(data))
write('local_copy_of_file.grib', data)

# example which uses the Target parameter to directly save the file
download(url: "http://download.ecmwf.org/test-data/grib_api/data/budg.md5", target: 'local_md5.txt')