3 You always find news about what's going on as well as the latest versions
4 from the curl web pages, located at:
10 Get the main page from Netscape's web-server:
12 curl http://www.netscape.com/
14 Get the README file the user's home directory at funet's ftp-server:
16 curl ftp://ftp.funet.fi/README
18 Get a web page from a server using port 8000:
20 curl http://www.weirdserver.com:8000/
22 Get a list of a directory of an FTP site:
24 curl ftp://cool.haxx.se/
26 Get the definition of curl from a dictionary:
28 curl dict://dict.org/m:curl
30 Fetch two documents at once:
32 curl ftp://cool.haxx.se/ http://www.weirdserver.com:8000/
34 Get a file off an FTPS server:
36 curl ftps://files.are.secure.com/secrets.txt
38 or use the more appropriate FTPS way to get the same file:
40 curl --ftp-ssl ftp://files.are.secure.com/secrets.txt
42 Get a file from an SSH server using SFTP:
44 curl -u username sftp://shell.example.com/etc/issue
46 Get a file from an SSH server using SCP using a private key to authenticate:
48 curl -u username: --key ~/.ssh/id_dsa --pubkey ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub \
49 scp://shell.example.com/~/personal.txt
51 Get the main page from an IPv6 web server:
53 curl -g "http://[2001:1890:1112:1::20]/"
57 Get a web page and store in a local file:
59 curl -o thatpage.html http://www.netscape.com/
61 Get a web page and store in a local file, make the local file get the name
62 of the remote document (if no file name part is specified in the URL, this
65 curl -O http://www.netscape.com/index.html
67 Fetch two files and store them with their remote names:
69 curl -O www.haxx.se/index.html -O curl.haxx.se/download.html
75 To ftp files using name+passwd, include them in the URL like:
77 curl ftp://name:passwd@machine.domain:port/full/path/to/file
79 or specify them with the -u flag like
81 curl -u name:passwd ftp://machine.domain:port/full/path/to/file
85 It is just like for FTP, but you may also want to specify and use
86 SSL-specific options for certificates etc.
88 Note that using FTPS:// as prefix is the "implicit" way as described in the
89 standards while the recommended "explicit" way is done by using FTP:// and
94 This is similar to FTP, but you can specify a private key to use instead of
95 a password. Note that the private key may itself be protected by a password
96 that is unrelated to the login password of the remote system. If you
97 provide a private key file you must also provide a public key file.
101 Curl also supports user and password in HTTP URLs, thus you can pick a file
104 curl http://name:passwd@machine.domain/full/path/to/file
106 or specify user and password separately like in
108 curl -u name:passwd http://machine.domain/full/path/to/file
110 HTTP offers many different methods of authentication and curl supports
111 several: Basic, Digest, NTLM and Negotiate. Without telling which method to
112 use, curl defaults to Basic. You can also ask curl to pick the most secure
113 ones out of the ones that the server accepts for the given URL, by using
116 NOTE! Since HTTP URLs don't support user and password, you can't use that
117 style when using Curl via a proxy. You _must_ use the -u style fetch
118 during such circumstances.
122 Probably most commonly used with private certificates, as explained below.
126 Get an ftp file using a proxy named my-proxy that uses port 888:
128 curl -x my-proxy:888 ftp://ftp.leachsite.com/README
130 Get a file from a HTTP server that requires user and password, using the
133 curl -u user:passwd -x my-proxy:888 http://www.get.this/
135 Some proxies require special authentication. Specify by using -U as above:
137 curl -U user:passwd -x my-proxy:888 http://www.get.this/
139 A comma-separated list of hosts and domains which do not use the proxy can
142 curl --noproxy localhost,get.this -x my-proxy:888 http://www.get.this/
144 If the proxy is specified with --proxy1.0 instead of --proxy or -x, then
145 curl will use HTTP/1.0 instead of HTTP/1.1 for any CONNECT attempts.
147 curl also supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies with --socks4 and --socks5.
149 See also the environment variables Curl support that offer further proxy
154 With HTTP 1.1 byte-ranges were introduced. Using this, a client can request
155 to get only one or more subparts of a specified document. Curl supports
156 this with the -r flag.
158 Get the first 100 bytes of a document:
160 curl -r 0-99 http://www.get.this/
162 Get the last 500 bytes of a document:
164 curl -r -500 http://www.get.this/
166 Curl also supports simple ranges for FTP files as well. Then you can only
167 specify start and stop position.
169 Get the first 100 bytes of a document using FTP:
171 curl -r 0-99 ftp://www.get.this/README
175 FTP / FTPS / SFTP / SCP
177 Upload all data on stdin to a specified server:
179 curl -T - ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile
181 Upload data from a specified file, login with user and password:
183 curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile
185 Upload a local file to the remote site, and use the local file name remote
188 curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/
190 Upload a local file to get appended to the remote file:
192 curl -T localfile -a ftp://ftp.upload.com/remotefile
194 Curl also supports ftp upload through a proxy, but only if the proxy is
195 configured to allow that kind of tunneling. If it does, you can run curl in
196 a fashion similar to:
198 curl --proxytunnel -x proxy:port -T localfile ftp.upload.com
202 Upload all data on stdin to a specified http site:
204 curl -T - http://www.upload.com/myfile
206 Note that the http server must have been configured to accept PUT before
207 this can be done successfully.
209 For other ways to do http data upload, see the POST section below.
213 If curl fails where it isn't supposed to, if the servers don't let you in,
214 if you can't understand the responses: use the -v flag to get verbose
215 fetching. Curl will output lots of info and what it sends and receives in
216 order to let the user see all client-server interaction (but it won't show
217 you the actual data).
219 curl -v ftp://ftp.upload.com/
221 To get even more details and information on what curl does, try using the
222 --trace or --trace-ascii options with a given file name to log to, like
225 curl --trace trace.txt www.haxx.se
230 Different protocols provide different ways of getting detailed information
231 about specific files/documents. To get curl to show detailed information
232 about a single file, you should use -I/--head option. It displays all
233 available info on a single file for HTTP and FTP. The HTTP information is a
236 For HTTP, you can get the header information (the same as -I would show)
237 shown before the data by using -i/--include. Curl understands the
238 -D/--dump-header option when getting files from both FTP and HTTP, and it
239 will then store the headers in the specified file.
241 Store the HTTP headers in a separate file (headers.txt in the example):
243 curl --dump-header headers.txt curl.haxx.se
245 Note that headers stored in a separate file can be very useful at a later
246 time if you want curl to use cookies sent by the server. More about that in
251 It's easy to post data using curl. This is done using the -d <data>
252 option. The post data must be urlencoded.
254 Post a simple "name" and "phone" guestbook.
256 curl -d "name=Rafael%20Sagula&phone=3320780" \
257 http://www.where.com/guest.cgi
259 How to post a form with curl, lesson #1:
261 Dig out all the <input> tags in the form that you want to fill in. (There's
262 a perl program called formfind.pl on the curl site that helps with this).
264 If there's a "normal" post, you use -d to post. -d takes a full "post
265 string", which is in the format
267 <variable1>=<data1>&<variable2>=<data2>&...
269 The 'variable' names are the names set with "name=" in the <input> tags, and
270 the data is the contents you want to fill in for the inputs. The data *must*
271 be properly URL encoded. That means you replace space with + and that you
272 write weird letters with %XX where XX is the hexadecimal representation of
273 the letter's ASCII code.
277 (page located at http://www.formpost.com/getthis/
279 <form action="post.cgi" method="post">
280 <input name=user size=10>
281 <input name=pass type=password size=10>
282 <input name=id type=hidden value="blablabla">
283 <input name=ding value="submit">
286 We want to enter user 'foobar' with password '12345'.
288 To post to this, you enter a curl command line like:
290 curl -d "user=foobar&pass=12345&id=blablabla&ding=submit" (continues)
291 http://www.formpost.com/getthis/post.cgi
294 While -d uses the application/x-www-form-urlencoded mime-type, generally
295 understood by CGI's and similar, curl also supports the more capable
296 multipart/form-data type. This latter type supports things like file upload.
298 -F accepts parameters like -F "name=contents". If you want the contents to
299 be read from a file, use <@filename> as contents. When specifying a file,
300 you can also specify the file content type by appending ';type=<mime type>'
301 to the file name. You can also post the contents of several files in one
302 field. For example, the field name 'coolfiles' is used to send three files,
303 with different content types using the following syntax:
305 curl -F "coolfiles=@fil1.gif;type=image/gif,fil2.txt,fil3.html" \
306 http://www.post.com/postit.cgi
308 If the content-type is not specified, curl will try to guess from the file
309 extension (it only knows a few), or use the previously specified type (from
310 an earlier file if several files are specified in a list) or else it will
311 using the default type 'text/plain'.
313 Emulate a fill-in form with -F. Let's say you fill in three fields in a
314 form. One field is a file name which to post, one field is your name and one
315 field is a file description. We want to post the file we have written named
316 "cooltext.txt". To let curl do the posting of this data instead of your
317 favourite browser, you have to read the HTML source of the form page and
318 find the names of the input fields. In our example, the input field names
319 are 'file', 'yourname' and 'filedescription'.
321 curl -F "file=@cooltext.txt" -F "yourname=Daniel" \
322 -F "filedescription=Cool text file with cool text inside" \
323 http://www.post.com/postit.cgi
325 To send two files in one post you can do it in two ways:
327 1. Send multiple files in a single "field" with a single field name:
329 curl -F "pictures=@dog.gif,cat.gif"
331 2. Send two fields with two field names:
333 curl -F "docpicture=@dog.gif" -F "catpicture=@cat.gif"
335 To send a field value literally without interpreting a leading '@'
336 or '<', or an embedded ';type=', use --form-string instead of
337 -F. This is recommended when the value is obtained from a user or
338 some other unpredictable source. Under these circumstances, using
339 -F instead of --form-string would allow a user to trick curl into
344 A HTTP request has the option to include information about which address
345 that referred to actual page. Curl allows you to specify the
346 referrer to be used on the command line. It is especially useful to
347 fool or trick stupid servers or CGI scripts that rely on that information
348 being available or contain certain data.
350 curl -e www.coolsite.com http://www.showme.com/
352 NOTE: The Referer: [sic] field is defined in the HTTP spec to be a full URL.
356 A HTTP request has the option to include information about the browser
357 that generated the request. Curl allows it to be specified on the command
358 line. It is especially useful to fool or trick stupid servers or CGI
359 scripts that only accept certain browsers.
363 curl -A 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' http://www.nationsbank.com/
365 Other common strings:
366 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95
367 'Mozilla/3.04 (Win95; U)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95
368 'Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; U)' Netscape Version 2 for OS/2
369 'Mozilla/4.04 [en] (X11; U; AIX 4.2; Nav)' NS for AIX
370 'Mozilla/4.05 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.32 i586)' NS for Linux
372 Note that Internet Explorer tries hard to be compatible in every way:
373 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95)' MSIE for W95
375 Mozilla is not the only possible User-Agent name:
376 'Konqueror/1.0' KDE File Manager desktop client
377 'Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14' Lynx command line browser
381 Cookies are generally used by web servers to keep state information at the
382 client's side. The server sets cookies by sending a response line in the
383 headers that looks like 'Set-Cookie: <data>' where the data part then
384 typically contains a set of NAME=VALUE pairs (separated by semicolons ';'
385 like "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2;"). The server can also specify for what
386 path the "cookie" should be used for (by specifying "path=value"), when the
387 cookie should expire ("expire=DATE"), for what domain to use it
388 ("domain=NAME") and if it should be used on secure connections only
391 If you've received a page from a server that contains a header like:
392 Set-Cookie: sessionid=boo123; path="/foo";
394 it means the server wants that first pair passed on when we get anything in
395 a path beginning with "/foo".
397 Example, get a page that wants my name passed in a cookie:
399 curl -b "name=Daniel" www.sillypage.com
401 Curl also has the ability to use previously received cookies in following
402 sessions. If you get cookies from a server and store them in a file in a
405 curl --dump-header headers www.example.com
407 ... you can then in a second connect to that (or another) site, use the
408 cookies from the 'headers' file like:
410 curl -b headers www.example.com
412 While saving headers to a file is a working way to store cookies, it is
413 however error-prone and not the preferred way to do this. Instead, make curl
414 save the incoming cookies using the well-known netscape cookie format like
417 curl -c cookies.txt www.example.com
419 Note that by specifying -b you enable the "cookie awareness" and with -L
420 you can make curl follow a location: (which often is used in combination
421 with cookies). So that if a site sends cookies and a location, you can
422 use a non-existing file to trigger the cookie awareness like:
424 curl -L -b empty.txt www.example.com
426 The file to read cookies from must be formatted using plain HTTP headers OR
427 as netscape's cookie file. Curl will determine what kind it is based on the
428 file contents. In the above command, curl will parse the header and store
429 the cookies received from www.example.com. curl will send to the server the
430 stored cookies which match the request as it follows the location. The
431 file "empty.txt" may be a nonexistent file.
433 Alas, to both read and write cookies from a netscape cookie file, you can
434 set both -b and -c to use the same file:
436 curl -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt www.example.com
440 The progress meter exists to show a user that something actually is
441 happening. The different fields in the output have the following meaning:
443 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr.
444 Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed
445 0 151M 0 38608 0 0 9406 0 4:41:43 0:00:04 4:41:39 9287
448 % - percentage completed of the whole transfer
449 Total - total size of the whole expected transfer
450 % - percentage completed of the download
451 Received - currently downloaded amount of bytes
452 % - percentage completed of the upload
453 Xferd - currently uploaded amount of bytes
455 Dload - the average transfer speed of the download
457 Upload - the average transfer speed of the upload
458 Time Total - expected time to complete the operation
459 Time Current - time passed since the invoke
460 Time Left - expected time left to completion
461 Curr.Speed - the average transfer speed the last 5 seconds (the first
462 5 seconds of a transfer is based on less time of course.)
464 The -# option will display a totally different progress bar that doesn't
465 need much explanation!
469 Curl allows the user to set the transfer speed conditions that must be met
470 to let the transfer keep going. By using the switch -y and -Y you
471 can make curl abort transfers if the transfer speed is below the specified
472 lowest limit for a specified time.
474 To have curl abort the download if the speed is slower than 3000 bytes per
475 second for 1 minute, run:
477 curl -Y 3000 -y 60 www.far-away-site.com
479 This can very well be used in combination with the overall time limit, so
480 that the above operation must be completed in whole within 30 minutes:
482 curl -m 1800 -Y 3000 -y 60 www.far-away-site.com
484 Forcing curl not to transfer data faster than a given rate is also possible,
485 which might be useful if you're using a limited bandwidth connection and you
486 don't want your transfer to use all of it (sometimes referred to as
487 "bandwidth throttle").
489 Make curl transfer data no faster than 10 kilobytes per second:
491 curl --limit-rate 10K www.far-away-site.com
495 curl --limit-rate 10240 www.far-away-site.com
497 Or prevent curl from uploading data faster than 1 megabyte per second:
499 curl -T upload --limit-rate 1M ftp://uploadshereplease.com
501 When using the --limit-rate option, the transfer rate is regulated on a
502 per-second basis, which will cause the total transfer speed to become lower
503 than the given number. Sometimes of course substantially lower, if your
504 transfer stalls during periods.
508 Curl automatically tries to read the .curlrc file (or _curlrc file on win32
509 systems) from the user's home dir on startup.
511 The config file could be made up with normal command line switches, but you
512 can also specify the long options without the dashes to make it more
513 readable. You can separate the options and the parameter with spaces, or
514 with = or :. Comments can be used within the file. If the first letter on a
515 line is a '#'-symbol the rest of the line is treated as a comment.
517 If you want the parameter to contain spaces, you must enclose the entire
518 parameter within double quotes ("). Within those quotes, you specify a
521 NOTE: You must specify options and their arguments on the same line.
523 Example, set default time out and proxy in a config file:
525 # We want a 30 minute timeout:
527 # ... and we use a proxy for all accesses:
528 proxy = proxy.our.domain.com:8080
530 White spaces ARE significant at the end of lines, but all white spaces
531 leading up to the first characters of each line are ignored.
533 Prevent curl from reading the default file by using -q as the first command
534 line parameter, like:
536 curl -q www.thatsite.com
538 Force curl to get and display a local help page in case it is invoked
539 without URL by making a config file similar to:
542 url = "http://help.with.curl.com/curlhelp.html"
544 You can specify another config file to be read by using the -K/--config
545 flag. If you set config file name to "-" it'll read the config from stdin,
546 which can be handy if you want to hide options from being visible in process
549 echo "user = user:passwd" | curl -K - http://that.secret.site.com
553 When using curl in your own very special programs, you may end up needing
554 to pass on your own custom headers when getting a web page. You can do
555 this by using the -H flag.
557 Example, send the header "X-you-and-me: yes" to the server when getting a
560 curl -H "X-you-and-me: yes" www.love.com
562 This can also be useful in case you want curl to send a different text in a
563 header than it normally does. The -H header you specify then replaces the
564 header curl would normally send. If you replace an internal header with an
565 empty one, you prevent that header from being sent. To prevent the Host:
566 header from being used:
568 curl -H "Host:" www.server.com
572 Do note that when getting files with the ftp:// URL, the given path is
573 relative the directory you enter. To get the file 'README' from your home
574 directory at your ftp site, do:
576 curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com/README
578 But if you want the README file from the root directory of that very same
579 site, you need to specify the absolute file name:
581 curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com//README
583 (I.e with an extra slash in front of the file name.)
585 SFTP and SCP and PATH NAMES
587 With sftp: and scp: URLs, the path name given is the absolute name on the
588 server. To access a file relative to the remote user's home directory,
589 prefix the file with /~/ , such as:
591 curl -u $USER sftp://home.example.com/~/.bashrc
595 The FTP protocol requires one of the involved parties to open a second
596 connection as soon as data is about to get transfered. There are two ways to
599 The default way for curl is to issue the PASV command which causes the
600 server to open another port and await another connection performed by the
601 client. This is good if the client is behind a firewall that don't allow
602 incoming connections.
604 curl ftp.download.com
606 If the server for example, is behind a firewall that don't allow connections
607 on other ports than 21 (or if it just doesn't support the PASV command), the
608 other way to do it is to use the PORT command and instruct the server to
609 connect to the client on the given (as parameters to the PORT command) IP
612 The -P flag to curl supports a few different options. Your machine may have
613 several IP-addresses and/or network interfaces and curl allows you to select
614 which of them to use. Default address can also be used:
616 curl -P - ftp.download.com
618 Download with PORT but use the IP address of our 'le0' interface (this does
619 not work on windows):
621 curl -P le0 ftp.download.com
623 Download with PORT but use 192.168.0.10 as our IP address to use:
625 curl -P 192.168.0.10 ftp.download.com
629 Get a web page from a server using a specified port for the interface:
631 curl --interface eth0:1 http://www.netscape.com/
635 curl --interface 192.168.1.10 http://www.netscape.com/
639 Secure HTTP requires SSL libraries to be installed and used when curl is
640 built. If that is done, curl is capable of retrieving and posting documents
641 using the HTTPS protocol.
645 curl https://www.secure-site.com
647 Curl is also capable of using your personal certificates to get/post files
648 from sites that require valid certificates. The only drawback is that the
649 certificate needs to be in PEM-format. PEM is a standard and open format to
650 store certificates with, but it is not used by the most commonly used
651 browsers (Netscape and MSIE both use the so called PKCS#12 format). If you
652 want curl to use the certificates you use with your (favourite) browser, you
653 may need to download/compile a converter that can convert your browser's
654 formatted certificates to PEM formatted ones. This kind of converter is
655 included in recent versions of OpenSSL, and for older versions Dr Stephen
656 N. Henson has written a patch for SSLeay that adds this functionality. You
657 can get his patch (that requires an SSLeay installation) from his site at:
658 http://www.drh-consultancy.demon.co.uk/
660 Example on how to automatically retrieve a document using a certificate with
663 curl -E /path/to/cert.pem:password https://secure.site.com/
665 If you neglect to specify the password on the command line, you will be
666 prompted for the correct password before any data can be received.
668 Many older SSL-servers have problems with SSLv3 or TLS, that newer versions
669 of OpenSSL etc is using, therefore it is sometimes useful to specify what
670 SSL-version curl should use. Use -3, -2 or -1 to specify that exact SSL
671 version to use (for SSLv3, SSLv2 or TLSv1 respectively):
673 curl -2 https://secure.site.com/
675 Otherwise, curl will first attempt to use v3 and then v2.
677 To use OpenSSL to convert your favourite browser's certificate into a PEM
678 formatted one that curl can use, do something like this (assuming netscape,
679 but IE is likely to work similarly):
681 You start with hitting the 'security' menu button in netscape.
683 Select 'certificates->yours' and then pick a certificate in the list
685 Press the 'export' button
687 enter your PIN code for the certs
689 select a proper place to save it
691 Run the 'openssl' application to convert the certificate. If you cd to the
692 openssl installation, you can do it like:
694 # ./apps/openssl pkcs12 -in [file you saved] -clcerts -out [PEMfile]
697 RESUMING FILE TRANSFERS
699 To continue a file transfer where it was previously aborted, curl supports
700 resume on http(s) downloads as well as ftp uploads and downloads.
702 Continue downloading a document:
704 curl -C - -o file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file
706 Continue uploading a document(*1):
708 curl -C - -T file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file
710 Continue downloading a document from a web server(*2):
712 curl -C - -o file http://www.server.com/
714 (*1) = This requires that the ftp server supports the non-standard command
715 SIZE. If it doesn't, curl will say so.
717 (*2) = This requires that the web server supports at least HTTP/1.1. If it
718 doesn't, curl will say so.
722 HTTP allows a client to specify a time condition for the document it
723 requests. It is If-Modified-Since or If-Unmodified-Since. Curl allow you to
724 specify them with the -z/--time-cond flag.
726 For example, you can easily make a download that only gets performed if the
727 remote file is newer than a local copy. It would be made like:
729 curl -z local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html
731 Or you can download a file only if the local file is newer than the remote
732 one. Do this by prepending the date string with a '-', as in:
734 curl -z -local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html
736 You can specify a "free text" date as condition. Tell curl to only download
737 the file if it was updated since January 12, 2012:
739 curl -z "Jan 12 2012" http://remote.server.com/remote.html
741 Curl will then accept a wide range of date formats. You always make the date
742 check the other way around by prepending it with a dash '-'.
748 curl dict://dict.org/m:curl
749 curl dict://dict.org/d:heisenbug:jargon
750 curl dict://dict.org/d:daniel:web1913
752 Aliases for 'm' are 'match' and 'find', and aliases for 'd' are 'define'
753 and 'lookup'. For example,
755 curl dict://dict.org/find:curl
757 Commands that break the URL description of the RFC (but not the DICT
760 curl dict://dict.org/show:db
761 curl dict://dict.org/show:strat
763 Authentication is still missing (but this is not required by the RFC)
767 If you have installed the OpenLDAP library, curl can take advantage of it
768 and offer ldap:// support.
770 LDAP is a complex thing and writing an LDAP query is not an easy task. I do
771 advice you to dig up the syntax description for that elsewhere. Two places
772 that might suit you are:
774 Netscape's "Netscape Directory SDK 3.0 for C Programmer's Guide Chapter 10:
775 Working with LDAP URLs":
776 http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/dirsdk/csdk30/url.htm
778 RFC 2255, "The LDAP URL Format" http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/rfc2255.txt
780 To show you an example, this is now I can get all people from my local LDAP
781 server that has a certain sub-domain in their email address:
783 curl -B "ldap://ldap.frontec.se/o=frontec??sub?mail=*sth.frontec.se"
785 If I want the same info in HTML format, I can get it by not using the -B
786 (enforce ASCII) flag.
788 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
790 Curl reads and understands the following environment variables:
792 http_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY, FTP_PROXY
794 They should be set for protocol-specific proxies. General proxy should be
799 A comma-separated list of host names that shouldn't go through any proxy is
800 set in (only an asterisk, '*' matches all hosts)
804 If the host name matches one of these strings, or the host is within the
805 domain of one of these strings, transactions with that node will not be
809 The usage of the -x/--proxy flag overrides the environment variables.
813 Unix introduced the .netrc concept a long time ago. It is a way for a user
814 to specify name and password for commonly visited ftp sites in a file so
815 that you don't have to type them in each time you visit those sites. You
816 realize this is a big security risk if someone else gets hold of your
817 passwords, so therefore most unix programs won't read this file unless it is
818 only readable by yourself (curl doesn't care though).
820 Curl supports .netrc files if told so (using the -n/--netrc and
821 --netrc-optional options). This is not restricted to only ftp,
822 but curl can use it for all protocols where authentication is used.
824 A very simple .netrc file could look something like:
826 machine curl.haxx.se login iamdaniel password mysecret
830 To better allow script programmers to get to know about the progress of
831 curl, the -w/--write-out option was introduced. Using this, you can specify
832 what information from the previous transfer you want to extract.
834 To display the amount of bytes downloaded together with some text and an
837 curl -w 'We downloaded %{size_download} bytes\n' www.download.com
839 KERBEROS FTP TRANSFER
841 Curl supports kerberos4 and kerberos5/GSSAPI for FTP transfers. You need
842 the kerberos package installed and used at curl build time for it to be
845 First, get the krb-ticket the normal way, like with the kinit/kauth tool.
846 Then use curl in way similar to:
848 curl --krb private ftp://krb4site.com -u username:fakepwd
850 There's no use for a password on the -u switch, but a blank one will make
851 curl ask for one and you already entered the real password to kinit/kauth.
855 The curl telnet support is basic and very easy to use. Curl passes all data
856 passed to it on stdin to the remote server. Connect to a remote telnet
857 server using a command line similar to:
859 curl telnet://remote.server.com
861 And enter the data to pass to the server on stdin. The result will be sent
862 to stdout or to the file you specify with -o.
864 You might want the -N/--no-buffer option to switch off the buffered output
865 for slow connections or similar.
867 Pass options to the telnet protocol negotiation, by using the -t option. To
868 tell the server we use a vt100 terminal, try something like:
870 curl -tTTYPE=vt100 telnet://remote.server.com
872 Other interesting options for it -t include:
874 - XDISPLOC=<X display> Sets the X display location.
876 - NEW_ENV=<var,val> Sets an environment variable.
878 NOTE: the telnet protocol does not specify any way to login with a specified
879 user and password so curl can't do that automatically. To do that, you need
880 to track when the login prompt is received and send the username and
881 password accordingly.
883 PERSISTENT CONNECTIONS
885 Specifying multiple files on a single command line will make curl transfer
886 all of them, one after the other in the specified order.
888 libcurl will attempt to use persistent connections for the transfers so that
889 the second transfer to the same host can use the same connection that was
890 already initiated and was left open in the previous transfer. This greatly
891 decreases connection time for all but the first transfer and it makes a far
892 better use of the network.
894 Note that curl cannot use persistent connections for transfers that are used
895 in subsequence curl invokes. Try to stuff as many URLs as possible on the
896 same command line if they are using the same host, as that'll make the
897 transfers faster. If you use a http proxy for file transfers, practically
898 all transfers will be persistent.
900 MULTIPLE TRANSFERS WITH A SINGLE COMMAND LINE
902 As is mentioned above, you can download multiple files with one command line
903 by simply adding more URLs. If you want those to get saved to a local file
904 instead of just printed to stdout, you need to add one save option for each
905 URL you specify. Note that this also goes for the -O option (but not
908 For example: get two files and use -O for the first and a custom file
911 curl -O http://url.com/file.txt ftp://ftp.com/moo.exe -o moo.jpg
913 You can also upload multiple files in a similar fashion:
915 curl -T local1 ftp://ftp.com/moo.exe -T local2 ftp://ftp.com/moo2.txt
919 curl will connect to a server with IPv6 when a host lookup returns an IPv6
920 address and fall back to IPv4 if the connection fails. The --ipv4 and --ipv6
921 options can specify which address to use when both are available. IPv6
922 addresses can also be specified directly in URLs using the syntax:
924 http://[2001:1890:1112:1::20]/overview.html
926 When this style is used, the -g option must be given to stop curl from
927 interpreting the square brackets as special globbing characters. Link local
928 and site local addresses including a scope identifier, such as fe80::1234%1,
929 may also be used, but the scope portion must be numeric and the percent
930 character must be URL escaped. The previous example in an SFTP URL might
933 sftp://[fe80::1234%251]/
935 IPv6 addresses provided other than in URLs (e.g. to the --proxy, --interface
936 or --ftp-port options) should not be URL encoded.
941 For your convenience, we have several open mailing lists to discuss curl,
942 its development and things relevant to this. Get all info at
943 http://curl.haxx.se/mail/. Some of the lists available are:
947 Users of the command line tool. How to use it, what doesn't work, new
948 features, related tools, questions, news, installations, compilations,
949 running, porting etc.
953 Developers using or developing libcurl. Bugs, extensions, improvements.
957 Low-traffic. Only receives announcements of new public versions. At worst,
958 that makes something like one or two mails per month, but usually only one
959 mail every second month.
963 Using the curl functions in PHP. Everything curl with a PHP angle. Or PHP
968 Python hackers using curl with or without the python binding pycurl.
970 Please direct curl questions, feature requests and trouble reports to one of
971 these mailing lists instead of mailing any individual.