Drag the weblink of a file to a dired folder to save in that folder

Question

Assume that I am visiting a folder (directory) on my system by M-x dired in Emacs. Also assume that I am visiting a webpage like http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/pdf/ by the default web browser of my system (say Mozilla Firefox). If I drag the link elisp.pdf from this webpage and drop it on that dired buffer, the most natural things that one wishes to happen is to save the file elisp.pdf in that folder.

What are the most natural way to achieve this in Emacs?

Answer 1

I just added this feature to org-download.

Here's the implementation:

(defun org-download-dired (uri)
  "Download URI to current directory."
  (raise-frame)
  (let ((filename (file-name-nondirectory
                   (car (url-path-and-query
                         (url-generic-parse-url uri))))))
    (message "Downloading %s to %s ..."
             filename
             (expand-file-name filename))
    (url-retrieve
     uri
     (lambda (status filename)
       (let ((err (plist-get status :error)))
         (if err (error
                  "\"%s\" %s" uri
                  (downcase (nth 2 (assq (nth 2 err) url-http-codes))))))
       (let ((coding-system-for-write 'no-conversion))
         (write-region nil nil filename nil nil nil 'confirm)))
     (list
      (expand-file-name filename))
     t t)))

You just need to appropriately tie in the above function with dnd-protocol-alist. But a plain (require 'org-download) should suffice.