How do I download a binary file over HTTP?

The simplest way is the platform-specific solution:

 #!/usr/bin/env ruby
`wget http://somedomain.net/flv/sample/sample.flv`

Probably you are searching for:

require 'net/http'
# Must be somedomain.net instead of somedomain.net/, otherwise, it will throw exception.
Net::HTTP.start("somedomain.net") do |http|
    resp = http.get("/flv/sample/sample.flv")
    open("sample.flv", "wb") do |file|
        file.write(resp.body)
    end
end
puts "Done."

Edit: Changed. Thank You.

Edit2: The solution which saves part of a file while downloading:

# instead of http.get
f = open('sample.flv')
begin
    http.request_get('/sample.flv') do |resp|
        resp.read_body do |segment|
            f.write(segment)
        end
    end
ensure
    f.close()
end

I know that this is an old question, but Google threw me here and I think I found a simpler answer.

In Railscasts #179, Ryan Bates used the Ruby standard class OpenURI to do much of what was asked like this:

(Warning: untested code. You might need to change/tweak it.)

require 'open-uri'

File.open("/my/local/path/sample.flv", "wb") do |saved_file|
  # the following "open" is provided by open-uri
  open("http://somedomain.net/flv/sample/sample.flv", "rb") do |read_file|
    saved_file.write(read_file.read)
  end
end