Is it possible to download text from external URL

Is it possible to get URL contents from an external site like getJSON or getCSV does? for example:

Something like:

{{ $externalCSS := .getCSS "https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Space+Mono:400,700" }}
<style>
{{ $externalCSS.Content | safeCSS }}
</style>

No this is not possible.

Opened a feature request at https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/issues/5255

{{ $externalCSS := .getExternal "https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Space+Mono:400,700" }}
<style>
{{ $externalCSS.Content | safeCSS }}
</style>

Why won’t you use <style type="text/css" src="$url"> somewhere in the
body or in the template?

The $url you reference is external. The snippet in question would pull in the contents at build time and process them via hugo.

That wouldn’t download the contents of the URL.