Please note
- this answer relates to Nexus 2.X
- There is a noticeable performance impact of using the restlet API to download large artifacts, see: https://community.sonatype.com/t/slow-artefacts-download-performance-with-oss-2-x/2280
The core Nexus “redirect” REST API can be used to retrieve any version of an artifact from a nominated repository:
For example:
https://repository.sonatype.org/service/local/artifact/maven/redirect?r=central-proxy&g=log4j&a=log4j&v=LATEST
The v parameter can be a value like 1.0-SNAPSHOT, in which case Maven will return the latest time-stamped snapshot held in the repository. Similiarily the special value “LATEST” should do the same provided a more recent released version is not present.