curl command in Linux with Examples

For the library organisation CURL, see Research Libraries US. For other uses, see Curl .

what is curl

More options that change the tool’s behavior are available. It was originally named httpget and then became urlget before adopting the current name of cURL. The original author and lead developer is the Swedish developer Daniel Stenberg, who created cURL because he wanted to automate the fetching of currency exchange rates for IRC users. If CURL is not installed you can get the latest installer under that Link for Windows. You can read more on how to cURL with proxy in our blog post. CURL can be used to connect to any destination through a proxy.

How to Make a Request Using cURL

In addition, if you’re building a web app, you’ll probably want to make a web request using code in a language like Python. Nmap, or Network Mapper, is an open source Linux command line tool for network exploration and security auditing. Here are some of the most useful Nmap commands in Linux with examples. This guide details the most useful grep commands for Linux / Unix systems. After going through all the commands and examples, you will learn how to use grep to search files for a text from the terminal.

  • If you want to learn more about how the curl command works, check out the man page on curl by running man curl in your Linux command line.
  • It also means that it will try to play with what you give it.
  • Curl’s creator, Daniel Stenberg, defined it as a library that permits you to connect and interact with different servers with a number of protocols.
  • Curl (short for “Client URL”) is a command line tool that enables data transfer over various network protocols.

Curl started out as a command-line tool and it has been invoked from shell prompts and from within scripts by thousands of users over the years. Curl has established itself as one of those trusty tools that is there for you to help you get your work done. If you want to download multiple files from multiple URL, list all of them in a file.

What is CURL

This tool is preferred for automation since it is designed to work without user interaction. Curl (short for “Client URL”) is a command line tool that enables data transfer over various network protocols. It communicates with a web or application server by specifying a relevant URL and the data that need to be sent or received.

Do curlers have their own stones?

To play curling, a set of stones are needed. They are made of a special type of granite and weigh almost 20 kilos each. Each curler has their own brush and a pair of special curling shoes with one sole that grips the ice and one slippery sole – called a Slider – to be able to slide with a stone during delivery.

Since cURL uses libcurl, it supports every protocol libcurl supports. CURL is an incredibly powerful tool for data transfers through internet protocols. Detailing all the possible options on what is cURL used for would be an insurmountable task. Although there are a few common use cases which we will expand upon.

curl Command Options

The above example downloads the HTML and saves it into log.html and the code in code.c file. The next command shows the first 30 lines of the code. The progress bar shows how much of the file has been downloaded so far. The libcurl library is free, thread-safe and IPv6 compatible.

what is curl

However, the main advantage of using cURL is that it helps you figure out how to structure your web requests before you add them to your application. You can try out different methods and make sure a request is valid before actually coding it into your application.

Check version

In order to send a POST request to a URL, the -d (or –data) flag is used. Most websites will deny such requests from unauthorized users, therefore we will use a fake API for testing purposes. Nearly anyone with a relatively recent operating system can use cURL as it’s shipped as a default in Windows, MacOS, and most Linux distributions. For older systems such as any Windows operating system before 10, cURL might need to be downloaded and installed. Yet, the internet is chock full of questions on what it is, how to use it and even why should anyone bother with cURL. In this article, we shall uncover the mysterious command line tool, explain how it came to be such a universal asset and show a few examples of its usage.

After a few minor adjustments, it did just what he needed. […] HttpGet 1.0 was released on April 8th 1997 with brand new HTTP proxy support.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *