For example,

  $ nix-prefetch-url -A hello.src

will prefetch the file specified by the fetchurl call in the attribute
‘hello.src’ from the Nix expression in the current directory. This
differs from ‘nix-build -A hello.src’ in that it doesn't verify the
hash.

You can also specify a path to the Nix expression:

  $ nix-prefetch-url ~/Dev/nixpkgs -A hello.src

List elements (typically used in ‘patches’ attributes) also work:

  $ nix-prefetch-url -A portmidi.patches.0