Transfers data from or to a server. Supports most protocols including HTTP, FTP, POP3.
# To download the contents of an URL to a file:
curl <http://example.com> --output <filename>
# To download a file, saving the output under the filename indicated by the URL:
curl --remote-name <http://example.com/filename>
# To download a file, following location redirects, and automatically continuing (resuming) a previous file transfer:
curl --remote-name --location --continue-at - <http://example.com/filename>
# To send form-encoded data (POST request of type 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'). Use '--data @file_name' or '--data @'-'' to read from STDIN:
curl --data <'name=bob'> <http://example.com/form>
# To send a request with an extra header, using a custom HTTP method:
curl --header <'X-My-Header: 123'> --request <PUT> <http://example.com>
# To send data in JSON format, specifying the appropriate content-type header:
curl --data <'{"name":"bob"}'> --header <'Content-Type: application/json'> <http://example.com/users/1234>
# To pass a user name and password for server authentication:
curl --user myusername:mypassword <http://example.com>
# To pass client certificate and key for a resource, skipping certificate validation:
curl --cert <client.pem> --key <key.pem> --insecure <https://example.com>
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# To download a single file:
curl http://path.to.the/file
# To download a file and specify a new filename:
curl http://example.com/file.zip -o new_file.zip
# To download multiple files:
curl -O URLOfFirstFile -O URLOfSecondFile
# To download all sequentially numbered files (1-24):
curl http://example.com/pic[1-24].jpg
# To download a file and pass HTTP Authentication:
curl -u username:password URL
# To download a file with a Proxy:
curl -x proxysever.server.com:PORT http://addressiwantto.access
# To download a file from FTP:
curl -u username:password -O ftp://example.com/pub/file.zip
# To get an FTP directory listing:
curl ftp://username:password@example.com
# To resume a previously failed download:
curl -C - -o partial_file.zip http://example.com/file.zip
# To fetch only the HTTP headers from a response:
curl -I http://example.com
# To fetch your external IP and network info as JSON:
curl http://ifconfig.me/all/json
# To limit the rate of a download:
curl --limit-rate 1000B -O http://path.to.the/file
# To get your global IP:
curl httpbin.org/ip
# To get only the HTTP status code:
curl -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' -s -I <url>
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# To set request headers (-v verbose):
curl -v -H "Accept: application/json" http://somehost.com/somepath/somefile
# To sequentially download numbered resources (01-24), and set the naming pattern:
curl http://example.com/files/file-[01-24].pdf -o "chapter-#1.pdf"
# To download remote resoureces using braces {..} to specify alternatives:
curl http://example.com/files/{one,two,three}.html
# To detect request directs:
curl -sI google.com | head -1 | egrep '301|302|307' | wc -l
# To create a POST request:
curl -d "item=bottle&category=consumer&submit=ok" www.example.com/process.php
# To create a HTTP Basic auth request:
curl -u username:password http://www.example.com/
# To follow redirected URL's:
curl -L http://google.com
# To specify a proxy server:
curl -U : --proxy-ntlm --proxy my-proxyserver.net:80 -O http://www.google.com/
# To set the referer:
curl -e http://some_referring_site.com http://www.example.com/
# To set the user-agent:
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/12.0.742.112 Safari/534.30"
# To fetch response headers:
curl -I http://jonlabelle.com/
# To fetch response headers:
curl --head https://www.jonlabelle.com/
# To fetch response headers and body:
curl -i http://jonlabelle.com/
# To dump response headers to file:
curl --dump-header headers.txt https://www.jonlabelle.com/
# To download a file using FTP:
curl -u ftpuser:ftppass -O ftp://ftp_server/public_html/xss.php
# To get an FTP directory listing:
curl ftp://username:password@example.com
# To get an FTP directory listing for a specific directory:
curl -u ftpuser:ftppass -O ftp://ftp_server/public_html/
# To upload a file with FTP:
curl -T uploadfilename -u username:password ftp://sitename.com/myfile
curl -T uploadfilename -u username:password ftp://sitename.com/directory/myfile
# To get an FTP list and download files using ranges:
curl ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/main/[a-z]/
# To FTP upload multiple files at a same time using ranges:
curl -u ftpuser:ftppass -T "{file1,file2}" ftp://ftp.testserver.com
# To get user input, and save contents to ftp as `myfile_1.txt`:
curl -u ftpuser:ftppass -T - ftp://ftp.testserver.com/myfile_1.txt
# To enable a full-trace dump of all incoming/outgoing data:
curl -v --trace - http://google.com
# To specify a proxy server and download a file:
curl -x proxysever.test.com:3128 http://google.co.in
# To send mail using SMTP Protocol (note: type . (period) as the last to send):
curl --mail-from blah@test.com --mail-rcpt foo@test.com smtp://mailserver.com
# To get network info:
curl ifconfig.me # ip
curl ifconfig.me/host # hostname
curl ifconfig.me/ua # user agent
curl ifconfig.me/<port> # open port check
curl ifconfig.me/all # all
# To continue/resume a previous download:
curl -O http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html # ctl+c to stop the dl
curl -C - -O http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html # continue the dl
# To limit the rate of data transfer (1000 bytes/second):
curl --limit-rate 1000B -O \
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html
# To download a file if modified before/after the given date and time:
curl -z 21-Dec-11 http://www.example.com/yy.html # if modified `later` than the given date and time
curl -z -21-Dec-11 http://www.example.com/yy.html # if modified `before` the given date and time
# To resume a failed download:
curl -C - -o partially_downloaded_file 'http://www.example.com/path/to/the/file'
# To get the population of the US (in JSON):
curl --silent 'http://api.census.gov/data/2016/pep/population?get=POP,GEONAME&for=us:*' | python -c 'import json,sys;obj=json.load(sys.stdin);print obj[1][0]'
# To get the population of the world (in JSON):
curl --silent http://www.census.gov/popclock/data/population/world | python -c 'import json,sys;obj=json.load(sys.stdin);print obj["world"]["population"]'
# To download all images from a 4chan thread (first grep all href images then sed the url part then wget):
curl --silent $1 | grep -o -i '<a href="//images.4chan.org/[^>]*>' | sed -r 's%.*"//([^"]*)".*%\1%' | xargs wget
# To store and reuse cookies (i.e.: for logging into web site):
curl -L -d "uid=<username>&pwd=<password>" http://www.example.com -c cookies.txt
# To debug redirects between production reloads:
# watches the headers of a curl, following any redirects and printing only
# the HTTP status and the location of the possible redirects
watch 'curl -s --location -I http://any.site.or.url | grep -e "\(HTTP\|Location\)"'
# To check if a web server supports gzip compression:
curl -I -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate" http://example.org
# To get the external IP and network info (as json):
curl ifconfig.me/all/json
# To download a file from SFTP:
curl -u username sftp://example.com/path/to/file.txt
# To download a file using SSH and SCP (secure copy), and a private key for authentication:
curl -u username: --key ~/.ssh/id_rsa --pubkey ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub \
scp://example.net/~/videos/rhn_register.ogv
# To get a remote resource file size in bytes:
curl -sI http://example.com/css/base.css | awk '/Content-Length/ { print $2 }'
###
#
# Authentication
# https://ec.haxx.se/http/http-auth
# To make a request using Basic Authentication:
curl --user daniel:secret http://example.com/
# To ask curl to figure that out and then automatically use the most safe auhentication method it knows about:
curl --anyauth --user daniel:secret http://example.com/
# Same concept as above, but using a proxy server:
curl --proxy-anyauth --proxy-user daniel:secret http://example.com/ --proxy http://proxy.example.com:80/
# To specify an authentication method:
curl --digest --user daniel:secret http://example.com/
curl --negotiate --user daniel:secret http://example.com/
curl --ntlm --user daniel:secret http://example.com/