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23 .TH CURLOPT_URL 3 "17 Jun 2014" "libcurl 7.37.0" "curl_easy_setopt options"
25 CURLOPT_URL \- provide the URL to use in the reqest
27 #include <curl/curl.h>
29 CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_URL, char *URL);
31 Pass in a pointer to the \fIURL\fP to work with. The parameter should be a
32 char * to a zero terminated string which must be URL-encoded in the following
35 scheme://host:port/path
37 For a greater explanation of the format please see RFC3986.
39 libcurl doesn't validate the syntax or use this variable until the transfer is
40 issued. Even if you set a crazy value here, \fIcurl_easy_setopt(3)\fP will
41 still return \fICURLE_OK\fP.
43 If the given URL lacks the scheme (such as "http://" or "ftp://" etc) then
44 libcurl will attempt to resolve the protocol based on one of the following
45 given host names: HTTP, FTP, DICT, LDAP, IMAP, POP3 or SMTP
47 Should the protocol, either that specified by the scheme or deduced by libcurl
48 from the host name, not be supported by libcurl then
49 \fICURLE_UNSUPPORTED_PROTOCOL\fP will be returned from either the
50 \fIcurl_easy_perform(3)\fP or \fIcurl_multi_perform(3)\fP functions when you
51 call them. Use \fIcurl_version_info(3)\fP for detailed information of which
52 protocols are supported by the build of libcurl you are using.
54 The host part of the URL contains the address of the server that you want to
55 connect to. This can be the fully qualified domain name of the server, the
56 local network name of the machine on your network or the IP address of the
57 server or machine represented by either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. For example:
59 http://www.example.com/
65 http://[2001:1890:1112:1::20]/
67 It is also possible to specify the user name, password and any supported login
68 options as part of the host, for the following protocols, when connecting to
69 servers that require authentication:
71 http://user:password@www.example.com
73 ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com
75 imap://user:password;options@mail.example.com
77 pop3://user:password;options@mail.example.com
79 smtp://user:password;options@mail.example.com
81 At present only IMAP, POP3 and SMTP support login options as part of the host.
82 For more information about the login options in URL syntax please see RFC2384,
83 RFC5092 and IETF draft draft-earhart-url-smtp-00.txt (Added in 7.31.0).
85 The port is optional and when not specified libcurl will use the default port
86 based on the determined or specified protocol: 80 for HTTP, 21 for FTP and 25
87 for SMTP, etc. The following examples show how to specify the port:
89 http://www.example.com:8080/ - This will connect to a web server using port
92 smtp://mail.example.com:587/ - This will connect to a SMTP server on the
93 alternative mail port.
95 The path part of the URL is protocol specific and whilst some examples are
96 given below this list is not conclusive:
99 The path part of a HTTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
100 directory. If the directory is not specified then the web server's root
101 directory is used. If the file is omitted then the default document will be
102 retrieved for either the directory specified or the root directory. The exact
103 resource returned for each URL is entirely dependent on the server's
106 http://www.example.com - This gets the main page from the web server.
108 http://www.example.com/index.html - This returns the main page by explicitly
111 http://www.example.com/contactus/ - This returns the default document from
112 the contactus directory.
115 The path part of an FTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
116 directory. If the file part is omitted then libcurl downloads the directory
117 listing for the directory specified. If the directory is omitted then
118 the directory listing for the root / home directory will be returned.
120 ftp://ftp.example.com - This retrieves the directory listing for the root
123 ftp://ftp.example.com/readme.txt - This downloads the file readme.txt from the
126 ftp://ftp.example.com/libcurl/readme.txt - This downloads readme.txt from the
129 ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com/readme.txt - This retrieves the readme.txt
130 file from the user's home directory. When a username and password is
131 specified, everything that is specified in the path part is relative to the
132 user's home directory. To retrieve files from the root directory or a
133 directory underneath the root directory then the absolute path must be
134 specified by prepending an additional forward slash to the beginning of the
137 ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com//readme.txt - This retrieves the readme.txt
138 from the root directory when logging in as a specified user.
141 The path part of a SMTP request specifies the host name to present during
142 communication with the mail server. If the path is omitted then libcurl will
143 attempt to resolve the local computer's host name. However, this may not
144 return the fully qualified domain name that is required by some mail servers
145 and specifying this path allows you to set an alternative name, such as
146 your machine's fully qualified domain name, which you might have obtained
147 from an external function such as gethostname or getaddrinfo.
149 smtp://mail.example.com - This connects to the mail server at example.com and
150 sends your local computer's host name in the HELO / EHLO command.
152 smtp://mail.example.com/client.example.com - This will send client.example.com in
153 the HELO / EHLO command to the mail server at example.com.
156 The path part of a POP3 request specifies the message ID to retrieve. If the
157 ID is not specified then a list of waiting messages is returned instead.
159 pop3://user:password@mail.example.com - This lists the available messages for
162 pop3://user:password@mail.example.com/1 - This retrieves the first message for
166 The path part of an IMAP request not only specifies the mailbox to list (Added
167 in 7.30.0) or select, but can also be used to check the UIDVALIDITY of the
168 mailbox, to specify the UID, SECTION (Added in 7.30.0) and PARTIAL octets
169 (Added in 7.37.0) of the message to fetch and to specify what nessages to
170 search for (Added in 7.37.0).
172 imap://user:password@mail.example.com - Performs a top level folder list
174 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX - Performs a folder list on the
177 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=1 - Selects the user's inbox
178 and fetches message 1
180 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX;UIDVALIDITY=50/;UID=2 - Selects
181 the user's inbox, checks the UIDVALIDITY of the mailbox is 50 and fetches
184 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=3/;SECTION=TEXT - Selects the
185 user's inbox and fetches the text portial of message 3
187 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=4/;PARTIAL=0.1024 - Selects
188 the user's inbox and fetches the first 1024 octets of message 4
190 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX?NEW - Selects the user's inbox and
191 checks for NEW messages
193 imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX?SUBJECT%20shadows - Selects the
194 user's inbox and searches for messages containing "shadows" in the subject
197 For more information about the individual components of an IMAP URL please
201 The path part of a SCP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
202 directory. The file part may not be omitted. The file is taken as an absolute
203 path from the root directory on the server. To specify a path relative to the
204 user's home directory on the server, prepend ~/ to the path portion. If the
205 user name is not embedded in the URL, it can be set with the
206 \fICURLOPT_USERPWD(3)\fP or \fICURLOPT_USERNAME(3)\fP option.
208 scp://user@example.com/etc/issue - This specifies the file /etc/issue
210 scp://example.com/~/my-file - This specifies the file my-file in the
211 user's home directory on the server
214 The path part of a SFTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
215 directory. If the file part is omitted then libcurl downloads the directory
216 listing for the directory specified. If the path ends in a / then a directory
217 listing is returned instead of a file. If the path is omitted entirely then
218 the directory listing for the root / home directory will be returned. If the
219 user name is not embedded in the URL, it can be set with the
220 \fICURLOPT_USERPWD(3)\fP or \fICURLOPT_USERNAME(3)\fP option.
222 sftp://user:password@example.com/etc/issue - This specifies the file
225 sftp://user@example.com/~/my-file - This specifies the file my-file in the
226 user's home directory
228 sftp://ssh.example.com/~/Documents/ - This requests a directory listing
229 of the Documents directory under the user's home directory
232 The path part of a LDAP request can be used to specify the: Distinguished
233 Name, Attributes, Scope, Filter and Extension for a LDAP search. Each field
234 is separated by a question mark and when that field is not required an empty
235 string with the question mark separator should be included.
237 ldap://ldap.example.com/o=My%20Organisation - This will perform a LDAP search
238 with the DN as My Organisation.
240 ldap://ldap.example.com/o=My%20Organisation?postalAddress - This will perform
241 the same search but will only return postalAddress attributes.
243 ldap://ldap.example.com/?rootDomainNamingContext - This specifies an empty DN
244 and requests information about the rootDomainNamingContext attribute for an
245 Active Directory server.
247 For more information about the individual components of a LDAP URL please
250 There's no official URL spec for RTMP so libcurl uses the URL syntax supported
251 by the underlying librtmp library. It has a syntax where it wants a
252 traditional URL, followed by a space and a series of space-separated
255 While space is not typically a "legal" letter, libcurl accepts them. When a
256 user wants to pass in a '#' (hash) character it will be treated as a fragment
257 and get cut off by libcurl if provided literally. You will instead have to
258 escape it by providing it as backslash and its ASCII value in hexadecimal:
262 \fICURLOPT_URL(3)\fP is the only option that \fBmust\fP be set before a
265 \fICURLOPT_PROTOCOLS(3)\fP can be used to limit what protocols libcurl will
266 use for this transfer, independent of what libcurl has been compiled to
267 support. That may be useful if you accept the URL from an external source and
268 want to limit the accessibility.
270 There is no default URL. If this option isn't set, no transfer can be
276 curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com");
278 POP3 and SMTP added in 7.31.0
282 .BR CURLOPT_VERBOSE "(3), " CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS "(3), "
283 .BR curl_easy_perform "(3)"