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Diffstat (limited to 'docs/TheArtOfHttpScripting')
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1 files changed, 48 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/docs/TheArtOfHttpScripting b/docs/TheArtOfHttpScripting index f3357d474..3d237b489 100644 --- a/docs/TheArtOfHttpScripting +++ b/docs/TheArtOfHttpScripting @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ Online: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html -Date: December 9, 2004 +Date: May 28, 2008 The Art Of Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl ============================================= @@ -137,6 +137,10 @@ Date: December 9, 2004 you need to replace that space with %20 etc. Failing to comply with this will most likely cause your data to be received wrongly and messed up. + Recent curl versions can in fact url-encode POST data for you, like this: + + curl --data-urlencode "name=I am Daniel" www.example.com + 4.3 File Upload POST Back in late 1995 they defined an additional way to post data over HTTP. It @@ -202,14 +206,14 @@ Date: December 9, 2004 curl -T uploadfile www.uploadhttp.com/receive.cgi -6. Authentication +6. HTTP Authentication - Authentication is the ability to tell the server your username and password - so that it can verify that you're allowed to do the request you're doing. The - Basic authentication used in HTTP (which is the type curl uses by default) is - *plain* *text* based, which means it sends username and password only - slightly obfuscated, but still fully readable by anyone that sniffs on the - network between you and the remote server. + HTTP Authentication is the ability to tell the server your username and + password so that it can verify that you're allowed to do the request you're + doing. The Basic authentication used in HTTP (which is the type curl uses by + default) is *plain* *text* based, which means it sends username and password + only slightly obfuscated, but still fully readable by anyone that sniffs on + the network between you and the remote server. To tell curl to use a user and password for authentication: @@ -237,6 +241,10 @@ Date: December 9, 2004 able to watch your passwords if you pass them as plain command line options. There are ways to circumvent this. + It is worth noting that while this is how HTTP Authentication works, very + many web sites will not use this concept when they provide logins etc. See + the Web Login chapter further below for more details on that. + 7. Referer A HTTP request may include a 'referer' field (yes it is misspelled), which @@ -407,7 +415,37 @@ Date: December 9, 2004 curl -H "Destination: http://moo.com/nowhere" http://url.com -13. Debug +13. Web Login + + While not strictly just HTTP related, it still cause a lot of people problems + so here's the executive run-down of how the vast majority of all login forms + work and how to login to them using curl. + + It can also be noted that to do this properly in an automated fashion, you + will most certainly need to script things and do multiple curl invokes etc. + + First, servers mostly use cookies to track the logged-in status of the + client, so you will need to capture the cookies you receive in the + responses. Then, many sites also set a special cookie on the login page (to + make sure you got there through their login page) so you should make a habit + of first getting the login-form page to capture the cookies set there. + + Some web-based login systems features various amounts of javascript, and + sometimes they use such code to set or modify cookie contents. Possibly they + do that to prevent programmed logins, like this manual describes how to... + Anyway, if reading the code isn't enough to let you repeat the behavior + manually, capturing the HTTP requests done by your browers and analyzing the + sent cookies is usually a working method to work out how to shortcut the + javascript need. + + In the actual <form> tag for the login, lots of sites fill-in random/session + or otherwise secretly generated hidden tags and you may need to first capture + the HTML code for the login form and extract all the hidden fields to be able + to do a proper login POST. Remember that the contents need to be URL encoded + when sent in a normal POST. + + +14. Debug Many times when you run curl on a site, you'll notice that the site doesn't seem to respond the same way to your curl requests as it does to your @@ -437,7 +475,7 @@ Date: December 9, 2004 such as ethereal or tcpdump and check what headers that were sent and received by the browser. (HTTPS makes this technique inefficient.) -14. References +15. References RFC 2616 is a must to read if you want in-depth understanding of the HTTP protocol. |