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 curl also supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies with --socks4 and --socks5.
141 See also the environment variables Curl support that offer further proxy
146 With HTTP 1.1 byte-ranges were introduced. Using this, a client can request
147 to get only one or more subparts of a specified document. Curl supports
148 this with the -r flag.
150 Get the first 100 bytes of a document:
152 curl -r 0-99 http://www.get.this/
154 Get the last 500 bytes of a document:
156 curl -r -500 http://www.get.this/
158 Curl also supports simple ranges for FTP files as well. Then you can only
159 specify start and stop position.
161 Get the first 100 bytes of a document using FTP:
163 curl -r 0-99 ftp://www.get.this/README
167 FTP / FTPS / SFTP / SCP
169 Upload all data on stdin to a specified server:
171 curl -T - ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile
173 Upload data from a specified file, login with user and password:
175 curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/myfile
177 Upload a local file to the remote site, and use the local file name remote
180 curl -T uploadfile -u user:passwd ftp://ftp.upload.com/
182 Upload a local file to get appended to the remote file:
184 curl -T localfile -a ftp://ftp.upload.com/remotefile
186 Curl also supports ftp upload through a proxy, but only if the proxy is
187 configured to allow that kind of tunneling. If it does, you can run curl in
188 a fashion similar to:
190 curl --proxytunnel -x proxy:port -T localfile ftp.upload.com
194 Upload all data on stdin to a specified http site:
196 curl -T - http://www.upload.com/myfile
198 Note that the http server must have been configured to accept PUT before
199 this can be done successfully.
201 For other ways to do http data upload, see the POST section below.
205 If curl fails where it isn't supposed to, if the servers don't let you in,
206 if you can't understand the responses: use the -v flag to get verbose
207 fetching. Curl will output lots of info and what it sends and receives in
208 order to let the user see all client-server interaction (but it won't show
209 you the actual data).
211 curl -v ftp://ftp.upload.com/
213 To get even more details and information on what curl does, try using the
214 --trace or --trace-ascii options with a given file name to log to, like
217 curl --trace trace.txt www.haxx.se
222 Different protocols provide different ways of getting detailed information
223 about specific files/documents. To get curl to show detailed information
224 about a single file, you should use -I/--head option. It displays all
225 available info on a single file for HTTP and FTP. The HTTP information is a
228 For HTTP, you can get the header information (the same as -I would show)
229 shown before the data by using -i/--include. Curl understands the
230 -D/--dump-header option when getting files from both FTP and HTTP, and it
231 will then store the headers in the specified file.
233 Store the HTTP headers in a separate file (headers.txt in the example):
235 curl --dump-header headers.txt curl.haxx.se
237 Note that headers stored in a separate file can be very useful at a later
238 time if you want curl to use cookies sent by the server. More about that in
243 It's easy to post data using curl. This is done using the -d <data>
244 option. The post data must be urlencoded.
246 Post a simple "name" and "phone" guestbook.
248 curl -d "name=Rafael%20Sagula&phone=3320780" \
249 http://www.where.com/guest.cgi
251 How to post a form with curl, lesson #1:
253 Dig out all the <input> tags in the form that you want to fill in. (There's
254 a perl program called formfind.pl on the curl site that helps with this).
256 If there's a "normal" post, you use -d to post. -d takes a full "post
257 string", which is in the format
259 <variable1>=<data1>&<variable2>=<data2>&...
261 The 'variable' names are the names set with "name=" in the <input> tags, and
262 the data is the contents you want to fill in for the inputs. The data *must*
263 be properly URL encoded. That means you replace space with + and that you
264 write weird letters with %XX where XX is the hexadecimal representation of
265 the letter's ASCII code.
269 (page located at http://www.formpost.com/getthis/
271 <form action="post.cgi" method="post">
272 <input name=user size=10>
273 <input name=pass type=password size=10>
274 <input name=id type=hidden value="blablabla">
275 <input name=ding value="submit">
278 We want to enter user 'foobar' with password '12345'.
280 To post to this, you enter a curl command line like:
282 curl -d "user=foobar&pass=12345&id=blablabla&ding=submit" (continues)
283 http://www.formpost.com/getthis/post.cgi
286 While -d uses the application/x-www-form-urlencoded mime-type, generally
287 understood by CGI's and similar, curl also supports the more capable
288 multipart/form-data type. This latter type supports things like file upload.
290 -F accepts parameters like -F "name=contents". If you want the contents to
291 be read from a file, use <@filename> as contents. When specifying a file,
292 you can also specify the file content type by appending ';type=<mime type>'
293 to the file name. You can also post the contents of several files in one
294 field. For example, the field name 'coolfiles' is used to send three files,
295 with different content types using the following syntax:
297 curl -F "coolfiles=@fil1.gif;type=image/gif,fil2.txt,fil3.html" \
298 http://www.post.com/postit.cgi
300 If the content-type is not specified, curl will try to guess from the file
301 extension (it only knows a few), or use the previously specified type (from
302 an earlier file if several files are specified in a list) or else it will
303 using the default type 'text/plain'.
305 Emulate a fill-in form with -F. Let's say you fill in three fields in a
306 form. One field is a file name which to post, one field is your name and one
307 field is a file description. We want to post the file we have written named
308 "cooltext.txt". To let curl do the posting of this data instead of your
309 favourite browser, you have to read the HTML source of the form page and
310 find the names of the input fields. In our example, the input field names
311 are 'file', 'yourname' and 'filedescription'.
313 curl -F "file=@cooltext.txt" -F "yourname=Daniel" \
314 -F "filedescription=Cool text file with cool text inside" \
315 http://www.post.com/postit.cgi
317 To send two files in one post you can do it in two ways:
319 1. Send multiple files in a single "field" with a single field name:
321 curl -F "pictures=@dog.gif,cat.gif"
323 2. Send two fields with two field names:
325 curl -F "docpicture=@dog.gif" -F "catpicture=@cat.gif"
327 To send a field value literally without interpreting a leading '@'
328 or '<', or an embedded ';type=', use --form-string instead of
329 -F. This is recommended when the value is obtained from a user or
330 some other unpredictable source. Under these circumstances, using
331 -F instead of --form-string would allow a user to trick curl into
336 A HTTP request has the option to include information about which address
337 that referred to actual page. Curl allows you to specify the
338 referrer to be used on the command line. It is especially useful to
339 fool or trick stupid servers or CGI scripts that rely on that information
340 being available or contain certain data.
342 curl -e www.coolsite.com http://www.showme.com/
344 NOTE: The Referer: [sic] field is defined in the HTTP spec to be a full URL.
348 A HTTP request has the option to include information about the browser
349 that generated the request. Curl allows it to be specified on the command
350 line. It is especially useful to fool or trick stupid servers or CGI
351 scripts that only accept certain browsers.
355 curl -A 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' http://www.nationsbank.com/
357 Other common strings:
358 'Mozilla/3.0 (Win95; I)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95
359 'Mozilla/3.04 (Win95; U)' Netscape Version 3 for Windows 95
360 'Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; U)' Netscape Version 2 for OS/2
361 'Mozilla/4.04 [en] (X11; U; AIX 4.2; Nav)' NS for AIX
362 'Mozilla/4.05 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.32 i586)' NS for Linux
364 Note that Internet Explorer tries hard to be compatible in every way:
365 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95)' MSIE for W95
367 Mozilla is not the only possible User-Agent name:
368 'Konqueror/1.0' KDE File Manager desktop client
369 'Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14' Lynx command line browser
373 Cookies are generally used by web servers to keep state information at the
374 client's side. The server sets cookies by sending a response line in the
375 headers that looks like 'Set-Cookie: <data>' where the data part then
376 typically contains a set of NAME=VALUE pairs (separated by semicolons ';'
377 like "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2;"). The server can also specify for what
378 path the "cookie" should be used for (by specifying "path=value"), when the
379 cookie should expire ("expire=DATE"), for what domain to use it
380 ("domain=NAME") and if it should be used on secure connections only
383 If you've received a page from a server that contains a header like:
384 Set-Cookie: sessionid=boo123; path="/foo";
386 it means the server wants that first pair passed on when we get anything in
387 a path beginning with "/foo".
389 Example, get a page that wants my name passed in a cookie:
391 curl -b "name=Daniel" www.sillypage.com
393 Curl also has the ability to use previously received cookies in following
394 sessions. If you get cookies from a server and store them in a file in a
397 curl --dump-header headers www.example.com
399 ... you can then in a second connect to that (or another) site, use the
400 cookies from the 'headers' file like:
402 curl -b headers www.example.com
404 While saving headers to a file is a working way to store cookies, it is
405 however error-prone and not the preferred way to do this. Instead, make curl
406 save the incoming cookies using the well-known netscape cookie format like
409 curl -c cookies.txt www.example.com
411 Note that by specifying -b you enable the "cookie awareness" and with -L
412 you can make curl follow a location: (which often is used in combination
413 with cookies). So that if a site sends cookies and a location, you can
414 use a non-existing file to trigger the cookie awareness like:
416 curl -L -b empty.txt www.example.com
418 The file to read cookies from must be formatted using plain HTTP headers OR
419 as netscape's cookie file. Curl will determine what kind it is based on the
420 file contents. In the above command, curl will parse the header and store
421 the cookies received from www.example.com. curl will send to the server the
422 stored cookies which match the request as it follows the location. The
423 file "empty.txt" may be a nonexistent file.
425 Alas, to both read and write cookies from a netscape cookie file, you can
426 set both -b and -c to use the same file:
428 curl -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt www.example.com
432 The progress meter exists to show a user that something actually is
433 happening. The different fields in the output have the following meaning:
435 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Curr.
436 Dload Upload Total Current Left Speed
437 0 151M 0 38608 0 0 9406 0 4:41:43 0:00:04 4:41:39 9287
440 % - percentage completed of the whole transfer
441 Total - total size of the whole expected transfer
442 % - percentage completed of the download
443 Received - currently downloaded amount of bytes
444 % - percentage completed of the upload
445 Xferd - currently uploaded amount of bytes
447 Dload - the average transfer speed of the download
449 Upload - the average transfer speed of the upload
450 Time Total - expected time to complete the operation
451 Time Current - time passed since the invoke
452 Time Left - expected time left to completion
453 Curr.Speed - the average transfer speed the last 5 seconds (the first
454 5 seconds of a transfer is based on less time of course.)
456 The -# option will display a totally different progress bar that doesn't
457 need much explanation!
461 Curl allows the user to set the transfer speed conditions that must be met
462 to let the transfer keep going. By using the switch -y and -Y you
463 can make curl abort transfers if the transfer speed is below the specified
464 lowest limit for a specified time.
466 To have curl abort the download if the speed is slower than 3000 bytes per
467 second for 1 minute, run:
469 curl -Y 3000 -y 60 www.far-away-site.com
471 This can very well be used in combination with the overall time limit, so
472 that the above operation must be completed in whole within 30 minutes:
474 curl -m 1800 -Y 3000 -y 60 www.far-away-site.com
476 Forcing curl not to transfer data faster than a given rate is also possible,
477 which might be useful if you're using a limited bandwidth connection and you
478 don't want your transfer to use all of it (sometimes referred to as
479 "bandwidth throttle").
481 Make curl transfer data no faster than 10 kilobytes per second:
483 curl --limit-rate 10K www.far-away-site.com
487 curl --limit-rate 10240 www.far-away-site.com
489 Or prevent curl from uploading data faster than 1 megabyte per second:
491 curl -T upload --limit-rate 1M ftp://uploadshereplease.com
493 When using the --limit-rate option, the transfer rate is regulated on a
494 per-second basis, which will cause the total transfer speed to become lower
495 than the given number. Sometimes of course substantially lower, if your
496 transfer stalls during periods.
500 Curl automatically tries to read the .curlrc file (or _curlrc file on win32
501 systems) from the user's home dir on startup.
503 The config file could be made up with normal command line switches, but you
504 can also specify the long options without the dashes to make it more
505 readable. You can separate the options and the parameter with spaces, or
506 with = or :. Comments can be used within the file. If the first letter on a
507 line is a '#'-letter the rest of the line is treated as a comment.
509 If you want the parameter to contain spaces, you must enclose the entire
510 parameter within double quotes ("). Within those quotes, you specify a
513 NOTE: You must specify options and their arguments on the same line.
515 Example, set default time out and proxy in a config file:
517 # We want a 30 minute timeout:
519 # ... and we use a proxy for all accesses:
520 proxy = proxy.our.domain.com:8080
522 White spaces ARE significant at the end of lines, but all white spaces
523 leading up to the first characters of each line are ignored.
525 Prevent curl from reading the default file by using -q as the first command
526 line parameter, like:
528 curl -q www.thatsite.com
530 Force curl to get and display a local help page in case it is invoked
531 without URL by making a config file similar to:
534 url = "http://help.with.curl.com/curlhelp.html"
536 You can specify another config file to be read by using the -K/--config
537 flag. If you set config file name to "-" it'll read the config from stdin,
538 which can be handy if you want to hide options from being visible in process
541 echo "user = user:passwd" | curl -K - http://that.secret.site.com
545 When using curl in your own very special programs, you may end up needing
546 to pass on your own custom headers when getting a web page. You can do
547 this by using the -H flag.
549 Example, send the header "X-you-and-me: yes" to the server when getting a
552 curl -H "X-you-and-me: yes" www.love.com
554 This can also be useful in case you want curl to send a different text in a
555 header than it normally does. The -H header you specify then replaces the
556 header curl would normally send. If you replace an internal header with an
557 empty one, you prevent that header from being sent. To prevent the Host:
558 header from being used:
560 curl -H "Host:" www.server.com
564 Do note that when getting files with the ftp:// URL, the given path is
565 relative the directory you enter. To get the file 'README' from your home
566 directory at your ftp site, do:
568 curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com/README
570 But if you want the README file from the root directory of that very same
571 site, you need to specify the absolute file name:
573 curl ftp://user:passwd@my.site.com//README
575 (I.e with an extra slash in front of the file name.)
577 SFTP and SCP and PATH NAMES
579 With sftp: and scp: URLs, the path name given is the absolute name on the
580 server. To access a file relative to the remote user's home directory,
581 prefix the file with /~/ , such as:
583 curl -u $USER sftp://home.example.com/~/.bashrc
587 The FTP protocol requires one of the involved parties to open a second
588 connection as soon as data is about to get transfered. There are two ways to
591 The default way for curl is to issue the PASV command which causes the
592 server to open another port and await another connection performed by the
593 client. This is good if the client is behind a firewall that don't allow
594 incoming connections.
596 curl ftp.download.com
598 If the server for example, is behind a firewall that don't allow connections
599 on other ports than 21 (or if it just doesn't support the PASV command), the
600 other way to do it is to use the PORT command and instruct the server to
601 connect to the client on the given (as parameters to the PORT command) IP
604 The -P flag to curl supports a few different options. Your machine may have
605 several IP-addresses and/or network interfaces and curl allows you to select
606 which of them to use. Default address can also be used:
608 curl -P - ftp.download.com
610 Download with PORT but use the IP address of our 'le0' interface (this does
611 not work on windows):
613 curl -P le0 ftp.download.com
615 Download with PORT but use 192.168.0.10 as our IP address to use:
617 curl -P 192.168.0.10 ftp.download.com
621 Get a web page from a server using a specified port for the interface:
623 curl --interface eth0:1 http://www.netscape.com/
627 curl --interface 192.168.1.10 http://www.netscape.com/
631 Secure HTTP requires SSL libraries to be installed and used when curl is
632 built. If that is done, curl is capable of retrieving and posting documents
633 using the HTTPS protocol.
637 curl https://www.secure-site.com
639 Curl is also capable of using your personal certificates to get/post files
640 from sites that require valid certificates. The only drawback is that the
641 certificate needs to be in PEM-format. PEM is a standard and open format to
642 store certificates with, but it is not used by the most commonly used
643 browsers (Netscape and MSIE both use the so called PKCS#12 format). If you
644 want curl to use the certificates you use with your (favourite) browser, you
645 may need to download/compile a converter that can convert your browser's
646 formatted certificates to PEM formatted ones. This kind of converter is
647 included in recent versions of OpenSSL, and for older versions Dr Stephen
648 N. Henson has written a patch for SSLeay that adds this functionality. You
649 can get his patch (that requires an SSLeay installation) from his site at:
650 http://www.drh-consultancy.demon.co.uk/
652 Example on how to automatically retrieve a document using a certificate with
655 curl -E /path/to/cert.pem:password https://secure.site.com/
657 If you neglect to specify the password on the command line, you will be
658 prompted for the correct password before any data can be received.
660 Many older SSL-servers have problems with SSLv3 or TLS, that newer versions
661 of OpenSSL etc is using, therefore it is sometimes useful to specify what
662 SSL-version curl should use. Use -3, -2 or -1 to specify that exact SSL
663 version to use (for SSLv3, SSLv2 or TLSv1 respectively):
665 curl -2 https://secure.site.com/
667 Otherwise, curl will first attempt to use v3 and then v2.
669 To use OpenSSL to convert your favourite browser's certificate into a PEM
670 formatted one that curl can use, do something like this (assuming netscape,
671 but IE is likely to work similarly):
673 You start with hitting the 'security' menu button in netscape.
675 Select 'certificates->yours' and then pick a certificate in the list
677 Press the 'export' button
679 enter your PIN code for the certs
681 select a proper place to save it
683 Run the 'openssl' application to convert the certificate. If you cd to the
684 openssl installation, you can do it like:
686 # ./apps/openssl pkcs12 -in [file you saved] -clcerts -out [PEMfile]
689 RESUMING FILE TRANSFERS
691 To continue a file transfer where it was previously aborted, curl supports
692 resume on http(s) downloads as well as ftp uploads and downloads.
694 Continue downloading a document:
696 curl -C - -o file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file
698 Continue uploading a document(*1):
700 curl -C - -T file ftp://ftp.server.com/path/file
702 Continue downloading a document from a web server(*2):
704 curl -C - -o file http://www.server.com/
706 (*1) = This requires that the ftp server supports the non-standard command
707 SIZE. If it doesn't, curl will say so.
709 (*2) = This requires that the web server supports at least HTTP/1.1. If it
710 doesn't, curl will say so.
714 HTTP allows a client to specify a time condition for the document it
715 requests. It is If-Modified-Since or If-Unmodified-Since. Curl allow you to
716 specify them with the -z/--time-cond flag.
718 For example, you can easily make a download that only gets performed if the
719 remote file is newer than a local copy. It would be made like:
721 curl -z local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html
723 Or you can download a file only if the local file is newer than the remote
724 one. Do this by prepending the date string with a '-', as in:
726 curl -z -local.html http://remote.server.com/remote.html
728 You can specify a "free text" date as condition. Tell curl to only download
729 the file if it was updated since January 12, 2012:
731 curl -z "Jan 12 2012" http://remote.server.com/remote.html
733 Curl will then accept a wide range of date formats. You always make the date
734 check the other way around by prepending it with a dash '-'.
740 curl dict://dict.org/m:curl
741 curl dict://dict.org/d:heisenbug:jargon
742 curl dict://dict.org/d:daniel:web1913
744 Aliases for 'm' are 'match' and 'find', and aliases for 'd' are 'define'
745 and 'lookup'. For example,
747 curl dict://dict.org/find:curl
749 Commands that break the URL description of the RFC (but not the DICT
752 curl dict://dict.org/show:db
753 curl dict://dict.org/show:strat
755 Authentication is still missing (but this is not required by the RFC)
759 If you have installed the OpenLDAP library, curl can take advantage of it
760 and offer ldap:// support.
762 LDAP is a complex thing and writing an LDAP query is not an easy task. I do
763 advice you to dig up the syntax description for that elsewhere. Two places
764 that might suit you are:
766 Netscape's "Netscape Directory SDK 3.0 for C Programmer's Guide Chapter 10:
767 Working with LDAP URLs":
768 http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/dirsdk/csdk30/url.htm
770 RFC 2255, "The LDAP URL Format" http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/rfc2255.txt
772 To show you an example, this is now I can get all people from my local LDAP
773 server that has a certain sub-domain in their email address:
775 curl -B "ldap://ldap.frontec.se/o=frontec??sub?mail=*sth.frontec.se"
777 If I want the same info in HTML format, I can get it by not using the -B
778 (enforce ASCII) flag.
780 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
782 Curl reads and understands the following environment variables:
784 http_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY, FTP_PROXY
786 They should be set for protocol-specific proxies. General proxy should be
791 A comma-separated list of host names that shouldn't go through any proxy is
792 set in (only an asterisk, '*' matches all hosts)
796 If a tail substring of the domain-path for a host matches one of these
797 strings, transactions with that node will not be proxied.
800 The usage of the -x/--proxy flag overrides the environment variables.
804 Unix introduced the .netrc concept a long time ago. It is a way for a user
805 to specify name and password for commonly visited ftp sites in a file so
806 that you don't have to type them in each time you visit those sites. You
807 realize this is a big security risk if someone else gets hold of your
808 passwords, so therefore most unix programs won't read this file unless it is
809 only readable by yourself (curl doesn't care though).
811 Curl supports .netrc files if told so (using the -n/--netrc and
812 --netrc-optional options). This is not restricted to only ftp,
813 but curl can use it for all protocols where authentication is used.
815 A very simple .netrc file could look something like:
817 machine curl.haxx.se login iamdaniel password mysecret
821 To better allow script programmers to get to know about the progress of
822 curl, the -w/--write-out option was introduced. Using this, you can specify
823 what information from the previous transfer you want to extract.
825 To display the amount of bytes downloaded together with some text and an
828 curl -w 'We downloaded %{size_download} bytes\n' www.download.com
830 KERBEROS FTP TRANSFER
832 Curl supports kerberos4 and kerberos5/GSSAPI for FTP transfers. You need
833 the kerberos package installed and used at curl build time for it to be
836 First, get the krb-ticket the normal way, like with the kinit/kauth tool.
837 Then use curl in way similar to:
839 curl --krb private ftp://krb4site.com -u username:fakepwd
841 There's no use for a password on the -u switch, but a blank one will make
842 curl ask for one and you already entered the real password to kinit/kauth.
846 The curl telnet support is basic and very easy to use. Curl passes all data
847 passed to it on stdin to the remote server. Connect to a remote telnet
848 server using a command line similar to:
850 curl telnet://remote.server.com
852 And enter the data to pass to the server on stdin. The result will be sent
853 to stdout or to the file you specify with -o.
855 You might want the -N/--no-buffer option to switch off the buffered output
856 for slow connections or similar.
858 Pass options to the telnet protocol negotiation, by using the -t option. To
859 tell the server we use a vt100 terminal, try something like:
861 curl -tTTYPE=vt100 telnet://remote.server.com
863 Other interesting options for it -t include:
865 - XDISPLOC=<X display> Sets the X display location.
867 - NEW_ENV=<var,val> Sets an environment variable.
869 NOTE: the telnet protocol does not specify any way to login with a specified
870 user and password so curl can't do that automatically. To do that, you need
871 to track when the login prompt is received and send the username and
872 password accordingly.
874 PERSISTENT CONNECTIONS
876 Specifying multiple files on a single command line will make curl transfer
877 all of them, one after the other in the specified order.
879 libcurl will attempt to use persistent connections for the transfers so that
880 the second transfer to the same host can use the same connection that was
881 already initiated and was left open in the previous transfer. This greatly
882 decreases connection time for all but the first transfer and it makes a far
883 better use of the network.
885 Note that curl cannot use persistent connections for transfers that are used
886 in subsequence curl invokes. Try to stuff as many URLs as possible on the
887 same command line if they are using the same host, as that'll make the
888 transfers faster. If you use a http proxy for file transfers, practically
889 all transfers will be persistent.
891 MULTIPLE TRANSFERS WITH A SINGLE COMMAND LINE
893 As is mentioned above, you can download multiple files with one command line
894 by simply adding more URLs. If you want those to get saved to a local file
895 instead of just printed to stdout, you need to add one save option for each
896 URL you specify. Note that this also goes for the -O option (but not
899 For example: get two files and use -O for the first and a custom file
902 curl -O http://url.com/file.txt ftp://ftp.com/moo.exe -o moo.jpg
904 You can also upload multiple files in a similar fashion:
906 curl -T local1 ftp://ftp.com/moo.exe -T local2 ftp://ftp.com/moo2.txt
910 curl will connect to a server with IPv6 when a host lookup returns an IPv6
911 address and fall back to IPv4 if the connection fails. The --ipv4 and --ipv6
912 options can specify which address to use when both are available. IPv6
913 addresses can also be specified directly in URLs using the syntax:
915 http://[2001:1890:1112:1::20]/overview.html
917 When this style is used, the -g option must be given to stop curl from
918 interpreting the square brackets as special globbing characters. Link local
919 and site local addresses including a scope identifier, such as fe80::1234%1,
920 may also be used, but the scope portion must be numeric and the percent
921 character must be URL escaped. The previous example in an SFTP URL might
924 sftp://[fe80::1234%251]/
926 IPv6 addresses provided other than in URLs (e.g. to the --proxy, --interface
927 or --ftp-port options) should not be URL encoded.
932 For your convenience, we have several open mailing lists to discuss curl,
933 its development and things relevant to this. Get all info at
934 http://curl.haxx.se/mail/. Some of the lists available are:
938 Users of the command line tool. How to use it, what doesn't work, new
939 features, related tools, questions, news, installations, compilations,
940 running, porting etc.
944 Developers using or developing libcurl. Bugs, extensions, improvements.
948 Low-traffic. Only receives announcements of new public versions. At worst,
949 that makes something like one or two mails per month, but usually only one
950 mail every second month.
954 Using the curl functions in PHP. Everything curl with a PHP angle. Or PHP
959 Python hackers using curl with or without the python binding pycurl.
961 Please direct curl questions, feature requests and trouble reports to one of
962 these mailing lists instead of mailing any individual.