LATEST VERSION You always find news about what's going on as well as the latest versions from the curl web pages, located at: http://curl.haxx.nu SIMPLE USAGE Get the main page from netscape's web-server: curl http://www.netscape.com/ Get the root README file from funet's ftp-server: curl ftp://ftp.funet.fi/README Get a gopher document from funet's gopher server: curl gopher://gopher.funet.fi Get a web page from a server using port 8000: curl http://www.weirdserver.com:8000/ Get a list of the root directory of an FTP site: curl ftp://ftp.fts.frontec.se/ Get the definition of curl from a dictionary: curl dict://dict.org/m:curl DOWNLOAD TO A FILE Get a web page and store in a local file: curl -o thatpage.html http://www.netscape.com/ Get a web page and store in a local file, make the local file get the name of the remote document (if no file name part is specified in the URL, this will fail): curl -O http://www.netscape.com/index.html USING PASSWORDS FTP To ftp files using name+passwd, include them in the URL like: curl ftp://name:passwd@machine.domain:port/full/path/to/file or specify them with the -u flag like curl -u name:passwd ftp://machine.domain:port/full/path/to/file HTTP The HTTP URL doesn't support user and password in the URL string. Curl does support that anyway to provide a ftp-style interface and thus you can pick a file like: curl http://name:passwd@machine.domain/full/path/to/file or specify user and password separately like in curl -u name:passwd http://machine.domain/full/path/to/file NOTE! Since HTTP URLs don't support user and password, you can't use that style when using Curl via a proxy. You _must_ use the -u style fetch during such circumstances. HTTPS Probably most commonly used with private certificates, as explained below. GOPHER Curl features no password support for gopher. PROXY Get an ftp file using a proxy named my-proxy that uses port 888: curl -x my-proxy:888 ftp://ftp.leachsite.com/README Get a file from a HTTP server that requires user and password, using the same proxy as above: curl -u user:passwd -x my-proxy:888 http://www.get.this/ Some proxies require special authentication. Specify by using -U as above: curl -U user:passwd -x my-proxy:888 http://www.get.this/ See also the environment variables Curl support that offer further proxy control. RANGES With HTTP 1.1 byte-ranges were introduced. Using this, a client can request to get only one or more subparts of a specified document. Curl supports this with the -r flag. Get the first 100 bytes of a document: curl -r 0-99 http://www.get.this/ Get the last 500 bytes of a document: curl -r -500 http://www.get.this/ Curl also supports simple ranges for FTP files as well. Then you can only specify start and stop position. Get the first 100 bytes of a document using FTP: curl -r 0-99 ftp://www.get.this/README UPLOADING FTP Upload all data on stdin to a specified ftp site: curl -t ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile Upload data from a specified file, login with user and password: curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile Upload a local file to the remote site, and use the local file name remote too: curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/ NOTE: Curl is not currently supporing ftp upload through a proxy! The reason for this is simply that proxies are seldomly configured to allow this and that no author has supplied code that makes it possible! HTTP Upload all data on stdin to a specified http site: curl -t http://www.upload.com/myfile Note that the http server must've been configured to accept PUT before this can be done successfully. For other ways to do http data upload, see the POST section below. VERBOSE / DEBUG If curl fails where it isn't supposed to, if the servers don't let you in, if you can't understand the responses: use the -v flag to get VERBOSE fetching. Curl will output lots of info and all data it sends and receives in order to let the user see all client-server interaction. curl -v ftp://ftp.upload.com/ DETAILED INFORMATION Different protocols provide different ways of getting detailed information about specific files/documents. To get curl to show detailed information about a single file, you should use -I/--head option. It displays all available info on a single file for HTTP and FTP. The HTTP information is a lot more extensive. For HTTP, you can get the header information (the same as -I would show) shown before the data by using -i/--include. Curl understands the -D/--dump-header option when getting files from both FTP and HTTP, and it will then store the headers in the specified file. Store the HTTP headers in a separate file: curl --dump-header headers.txt curl.haxx.nu Note that headers stored in a separate file can be very useful at a later time if you want curl to use cookies sent by the server. More about that in the cookies section. POST (HTTP) It's easy to post data using curl. This is done using the -d option. The post data must be urlencoded. Post a simple "name" and "phone" guestbook. curl -d "name=Rafael%20Sagula&phone=3320780" \ http://www.where.com/guest.cgi While -d uses the application/x-www-form-urlencoded mime-type, generally understood by CGI's and similar, curl also supports the more capable multipart/form-data type. This latter type supports things like file upload. -F accepts parameters like -F "name=contents". If you want the contents to be read from a file, use <@filename> as contents. When specifying a file, you can also specify which content type the file is, by appending ';type=' to the file name. You can also post contents of several files in one field. So that the field name 'coolfiles' can be sent three files with different content types in a manner similar to: curl -F "coolfiles=@fil1.gif;type=image/gif,fil2.txt,fil3.html" \ http://www.post.com/postit.cgi If content-type is not specified, curl will try to guess from the extension (it only knows a few), or use the previously specified type (from an earlier file if several files are specified in a list) or finally using the default type 'text/plain'. Emulate a fill-in form with -F. Let's say you fill in three fields in a form. One field is a file name which to post, one field is your name and one field is a file description. We want to post the file we have written named "cooltext.txt". To let curl do the posting of this data instead of your favourite browser, you have to check out the HTML of the form page to get to know the names of the input fields. In our example, the input field names are 'file', 'yourname' and 'filedescription'. curl -F "file=@cooltext.txt" -F "yourname=Daniel" \ -F "filedescription=Cool text file with cool text inside" \ http://www.post.com/postit.cgi So, to send two files in one post you can do it in two ways: 1. Send multiple files in a single "field" with a single field name: curl -F "pictures=@dog.gif,cat.gif" 2. Send two fields with two field names: curl -F "docpicture=@dog.gif" -F "catpicture=@cat.gif" REFERER A HTTP request has the option to include information about which address that referred to actual page, and curl allows the user to specify that referrer to get specified on the command line. It is especially useful to fool or trick stupid servers or CGI scripts that rely on that information being available or contain certain data. curl -e www.coolsite.com http://www.showme.com/ USER AGENT A HTTP request has the option to include information about the browser that generated the request. Curl allows it to be specified on the command line. It is especially useful to fool or trick stupid servers or CGI scripts that only accept certain browsers. Example: curl -A 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' http://www.nationsbank.com/ Other common strings: 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95 'Mozilla/3.04 (Win95; U)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95 'Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; U)' Netscape Version 2 for OS/2 'Mozilla/4.04 [en] (X11; U; AIX 4.2; Nav)' NS for AIX 'Mozilla/4.05 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.32 i586)' NS for Linux Note that Internet Explorer tries hard to be compatible in every way: 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95)' MSIE for W95 Mozilla is not the only possible User-Agent name: 'Konqueror/1.0' KDE File Manager desktop client 'Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14' Lynx command line browser COOKIES Cookies are generally used by web servers to keep state information at the client's side. The server sets cookies by sending a response line in the headers that looks like 'Set-Cookie: ' where the data part then typically contains a set of NAME=VALUE pairs (separated by semicolons ';' like "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2;"). The server can also specify for what path the "cookie" should be used for (by specifying "path=value"), when the cookie should expire ("expire=DATE"), for what domain to use it ("domain=NAME") and if it should be used on secure connections only ("secure"). If you've received a page from a server that contains a header like: Set-Cookie: sessionid=boo123; path="/foo"; it means the server wants that first pair passed on when we get anything in a path beginning with "/foo". Example, get a page that wants my name passed in a cookie: curl -b "name=Daniel" www.sillypage.com Curl also has the ability to use previously received cookies in following sessions. If you get cookies from a server and store them in a file in a manner similar to: curl --dump-header headers www.example.com ... you can then in a second connect to that (or another) site, use the cookies from the 'headers' file like: curl -b headers www.example.com Note that by specifying -b you enable the "cookie awareness" and with -L you can make curl follow a location: (which often is used in combination with cookies). So that if a site sends cookies and a location, you can use a non-existing file to trig the cookie awareness like: curl -L -b empty-file www.example.com The file to read cookies from must be formatted using plain HTTP headers OR as netscape's cookie file. Curl will determine what kind it is based on the file contents. PROGRESS METER The progress meter exists to show a user that something actually is happening. The different fields in the output have the following meaning: % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr. Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed 0 151M 0 38608 0 0 9406 0 4:41:43 0:00:04 4:41:39 9287 From left-to-right: % - percentage completed of the whole transfer Total - total size of the whole expected transfer % - percentage completed of the download Received - currently downloaded amount of bytes % - percentage completed of the upload Xferd - currently uploaded amount of bytes Average Speed Dload - the average transfer speed of the download Average Speed Upload - the average transfer speed of the upload Time Total - expected time to complete the operation Time Current - time passed since the invoke Time Left - expected time left to completetion Curr.Speed - the average transfer speed the last 5 seconds (the first 5 seconds of a transfer is based on less time of course.) The -# option will display a totally different progress bar that doesn't need much explanation! SPEED LIMIT Curl offers the user to set conditions regarding transfer speed that must be met to let the transfer keep going. By using the switch -y and -Y you can make curl abort transfers if the transfer speed doesn't exceed your given lowest limit for a specified time. To let curl abandon downloading this page if its slower than 3000 bytes per second for 1 minute, run: curl -y 3000 -Y 60 www.far-away-site.com This can very well be used in combination with the overall time limit, so that the above operatioin must be completed in whole within 30 minutes: curl -m 1800 -y 3000 -Y 60 www.far-away-site.com CONFIG FILE Curl automatically tries to read the .curlrc file (or _curlrc file on win32 systems) from the user's home dir on startup. The config file should be made up with normal command line switches. Comments can be used within the file. If the first letter on a line is a '#'-letter the rest of the line is treated as a comment. Example, set default time out and proxy in a config file: # We want a 30 minute timeout: -m 1800 # ... and we use a proxy for all accesses: -x proxy.our.domain.com:8080 White spaces ARE significant at the end of lines, but all white spaces leading up to the first characters of each line are ignored. Prevent curl from reading the default file by using -q as the first command line parameter, like: curl -q www.thatsite.com Force curl to get and display a local help page in case it is invoked without URL by making a config file similar to: # default url to get http://help.with.curl.com/curlhelp.html You can specify another config file to be read by using the -K/--config flag. If you set config file name to "-" it'll read the config from stdin, which can be handy if you want to hide options from being visible in process tables etc: echo "-u user:passwd" | curl -K - http://that.secret.site.com EXTRA HEADERS When using curl in your own very special programs, you may end up needing to pass on your own custom headers when getting a web page. You can do this by using the -H flag. Example, send the header "X-you-and-me: yes" to the server when getting a page: curl -H "X-you-and-me: yes" www.love.com This can also be useful in case you want curl to send a different text in a header than it normally does. The -H header you specify then replaces the header curl would normally send. FTP and PATH NAMES Do note that when getting files with the ftp:// URL, the given path is relative the directory you enter. To get the file 'README' from your home directory at your ftp site, do: curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com/README But if you want the README file from the root directory of that very same site, you need to specify the absolute file name: curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com//README (I.e with an extra slash in front of the file name.) FTP and firewalls The FTP protocol requires one of the involved parties to open a second connction as soon as data is about to get transfered. There are two ways to do this. The default way for curl is to issue the PASV command which causes the server to open another port and await another connection performed by the client. This is good if the client is behind a firewall that don't allow incoming connections. curl ftp.download.com If the server for example, is behind a firewall that don't allow connections on other ports than 21 (or if it just doesn't support the PASV command), the other way to do it is to use the PORT command and instruct the server to connect to the client on the given (as parameters to the PORT command) IP number and port. The -P flag to curl allows for different options. Your machine may have several IP-addresses and/or network interfaces and curl allows you to select which of them to use. Default address can also be used: curl -P - ftp.download.com Download with PORT but use the IP address of our 'le0' interface: curl -P le0 ftp.download.com Download with PORT but use 192.168.0.10 as our IP address to use: curl -P 192.168.0.10 ftp.download.com HTTPS Secure HTTP requires SSLeay to be installed and used when curl is built. If that is done, curl is capable of retrieving and posting documents using the HTTPS procotol. Example: curl https://www.secure-site.com Curl is also capable of using your personal certificates to get/post files from sites that require valid certificates. The only drawback is that the certificate needs to be in PEM-format. PEM is a standard and open format to store certificates with, but it is not used by the most commonly used browsers (Netscape and MSEI both use the so called PKCS#12 format). If you want curl to use the certificates you use with your (favourite) browser, you may need to download/compile a converter that can convert your browser's formatted certificates to PEM formatted ones. Dr Stephen N. Henson has written a patch for SSLeay that adds this functionality. You can get his patch (that requires an SSLeay installation) from his site at: http://www.drh-consultancy.demon.co.uk/ Example on how to automatically retrieve a document using a certificate with a personal password: curl -E /path/to/cert.pem:password https://secure.site.com/ If you neglect to specify the password on the command line, you will be prompted for the correct password before any data can be received. Many older SSL-servers have problems with SSLv3 or TLS, that newer versions of OpenSSL etc is using, therefore it is sometimes useful to specify what SSL-version curl should use. Use -3 or -2 to specify that exact SSL version to use: curl -2 https://secure.site.com/ Otherwise, curl will first attempt to use v3 and then v2. RESUMING FILE TRANSFERS To continue a file transfer where it was previously aborted, curl supports resume on http(s) downloads as well as ftp uploads and downloads. Continue downloading a document: curl -c -o file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file Continue uploading a document(*1): curl -c -T file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file Continue downloading a document from a web server(*2): curl -c -o file http://www.server.com/ (*1) = This requires that the ftp server supports the non-standard command SIZE. If it doesn't, curl will say so. (*2) = This requires that the wb server supports at least HTTP/1.1. If it doesn't, curl will say so. TIME CONDITIONS HTTP allows a client to specify a time condition for the document it requests. It is If-Modified-Since or If-Unmodified-Since. Curl allow you to specify them with the -z/--time-cond flag. For example, you can easily make a download that only gets performed if the remote file is newer than a local copy. It would be made like: curl -z local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html Or you can download a file only if the local file is newer than the remote one. Do this by prepending the date string with a '-', as in: curl -z -local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html You can specify a "free text" date as condition. Tell curl to only download the file if it was updated since yesterday: curl -z yesterday http://remote.server.com/remote.html Curl will then accept a wide range of date formats. You always make the date check the other way around by prepending it with a dash '-'. DICT For fun try curl dict://dict.org/m:curl curl dict://dict.org/d:heisenbug:jargon curl dict://dict.org/d:daniel:web1913 Aliases for 'm' are 'match' and 'find', and aliases for 'd' are 'define' and 'lookup'. For example, curl dict://dict.org/find:curl Commands that break the URL description of the RFC (but not the DICT protocol) are curl dict://dict.org/show:db curl dict://dict.org/show:strat Authentication is still missing (but this is not required by the RFC) LDAP If you have installed the OpenLDAP library, curl can take advantage of it and offer ldap:// support. LDAP is a complex thing and writing an LDAP query is not an easy task. I do advice you to dig up the syntax description for that elsewhere, RFC 1959 if no other place is better. To show you an example, this is now I can get all people from my local LDAP server that has a certain sub-domain in their email address: curl -B "ldap://ldap.frontec.se/o=frontec??sub?mail=*sth.frontec.se" If I want the same info in HTML format, I can get it by not using the -B (enforce ASCII) flag. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES Curl reads and understands the following environment variables: HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, FTP_PROXY, GOPHER_PROXY They should be set for protocol-specific proxies. General proxy should be set with ALL_PROXY A comma-separated list of host names that shouldn't go through any proxy is set in (only an asterisk, '*' matches all hosts) NO_PROXY If a tail substring of the domain-path for a host matches one of these strings, transactions with that node will not be proxied. The usage of the -x/--proxy flag overrides the environment variables. MAILING LIST We have an open mailing list to discuss curl, its development and things relevant to this. To subscribe, mail curl-request@contactor.se with "subscribe " in the body. To post to the list, mail curl@contactor.se. To unsubcribe, mail curl-request@contactor.se with "unsubscribe " in the body.