aria2 vs. curl and wget: Which Downloader Is Right for You?

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#!/bin/bash URLS=/home/user/urls.txt OUT=/home/user/Downloads LOGDIR=/var/log/aria2 mkdir -p “\(OUT" "\)LOGDIR” LOG=”\(LOGDIR/batch-\)(date +%F_%H%M%S).log”

 
MAXTRIES=3 for url in \((cat "\)URLS”); do   attempt=1   while [ \(attempt -le \)MAXTRIES ]; do
 
aria2c -x 4 -s 4 -d "$OUT" "$url" >> "$LOG" 2>&1 && break attempt=$((attempt+1)) sleep $((attempt * 5)) 
done done 

This downloads URLs one-by-one with retries; adapt to parallelism with GNU parallel if needed.
7. Use JSON-RPC for dynamic automation and remote control
Start aria2 daemon with RPC enabled:
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aria2c –enable-rpc –rpc-listen-all=false –rpc-allow-origin-all –rpc-listen-port=6800 –dir=/home/user/Downloads -D 
Example Python script to add downloads via RPC (requires requests):
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import requests, json 
ARIA2_URL = ‘http://localhost:6800/jsonrpc’
def add_uri(uri, out=None):

 
params = [[uri], {"out": out}] if out else [[uri]] payload = {"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"aria2.addUri","id":"qwer","params":params} r = requests.post(ARIA2_URL, json=payload) return r.json() 
print(adduri(”http://example.com/file.zip”,“file.zip”))



Use aria2’s methods: aria2.addUri, aria2.tellStatus, aria2.removeDownloadResult, aria2.pause, aria2.forcePause.
8. Windows PowerShell script (parallel downloads)
PowerShell example using Start-Process:
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\(urls = Get-Content .\urls.txt </span>\)aria2 = “C:\Program Files (x86)\aria2\aria2c.exe” \(downloadDir = "C:\Downloads" foreach (\)u in \(urls) {   Start-Process -FilePath \)aria2 -ArgumentList “-d "$downloadDir” "$u”” -NoNewWindow } 
For better control, use the RPC approach from PowerShell using Invoke-RestMethod to call aria2 JSON-RPC.
9. Post-download hooks and notifications
Use –on-download-complete to run a script:
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aria2c -i urls.txt –on-download-complete=/usr/local/bin/after_download.sh 
after_download.sh could move files, extract archives, or send a desktop notification / webhook.
Example afterdownload.sh:

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#!/bin/bash FILE=”\(3"   # aria2 passes GID, FILE, ... mv "\)FILE” /mnt/storage/finished/ curl -X POST -H “Content-Type: application/json” -d “{\“file\”:\“$FILE\”}” https://example.com/webhook

10. Tips for reliable automation

Use absolute paths in scripts and cron.
Keep aria2 session file (–save-session) to resume across runs:
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aria2c –save-session=/home/user/aria2.session –input-file=/home/user/aria2.session 

Limit disk and network I/O with –max-overall-download-limit and –max-overall-upload-limit.
Rotate logs and clean old .aria2 control files periodically.
Test scripts manually before scheduling.

Quick reference: common useful flags

–dir=PATH (download directory)
-i FILE (input file of URIs)
-j N (parallel downloads)
-x N (connections per server)
-s N (segments per file)
–enable-rpc (start RPC server)
–save-session=FILE and –input-file=FILE (session resume)
–on-download-complete=CMD (post-download hook)

Use these examples and scripts as templates — adapt paths, concurrency, and hooks to your environment for robust automated batch downloading with aria2.