Get plugin download URL from slug

Question

Is there a way to take a plugin slug (e.g. 'akismet') of a plugin that is NOT currently installed and somehow retrieve the download URL of the current version (e.g. 'http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/akismet.2.5.3.zip')?

This is for a command line script I am trying to develop that will enable plugin installation from the command line.

Answer 1

I forget exactly if the plugin slug is a reliable method to get the url, it might be in most cases but not all due to how plugins are named.

You can query the api @wordpress.org for the plugins xml file which also contains the download link.

For example:

$plugin_slug = 'akismet'; 
$return_plugin_info = "http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/$plugin_slug.xml"

It will return an XML file you can parse for the download link, which is in <download_link type="string">the link...akismet.zip</download>

Answer 2

I think I am late but as per new guidelines I found this is best possible solution

   // Set the arguments. For brevity of code, I will set only a few fields.
    $args = array(
        'slug' => 'akismet', // or any plugin slug
        'fields' => array(
            'version' => true
        )
    );

    // Make request and extract plug-in object. Action is query_plugins
    $response = wp_remote_post(
        'http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/',
        array(
            'body' => array(
                'action' => 'plugin_information',
                'request' => serialize((object)$args)
            )
        )
    );
    //
    if ( !is_wp_error($response) ) {
        $returned_object = unserialize(wp_remote_retrieve_body($response));   

        if ($returned_object) {
            $downloaded = $returned_object->downloaded;
            print_r($downloaded);
        }
        else {
            // Response body does not contain an object/array
            echo "An error has occurred.";
        }
    }
    else {
        // Error object returned
        echo "An error has occurred";
    }