.\" ************************************************************************** .\" * _ _ ____ _ .\" * Project ___| | | | _ \| | .\" * / __| | | | |_) | | .\" * | (__| |_| | _ <| |___ .\" * \___|\___/|_| \_\_____| .\" * .\" * Copyright (C) 1998 - 2008, Daniel Stenberg, , et al. .\" * .\" * This software is licensed as described in the file COPYING, which .\" * you should have received as part of this distribution. The terms .\" * are also available at http://curl.haxx.se/docs/copyright.html. .\" * .\" * You may opt to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute and/or sell .\" * copies of the Software, and permit persons to whom the Software is .\" * furnished to do so, under the terms of the COPYING file. .\" * .\" * This software is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY .\" * KIND, either express or implied. .\" * .\" * $Id$ .\" ************************************************************************** .\" .TH curl 1 "5 June 2008" "Curl 7.19.0" "Curl Manual" .SH NAME curl \- transfer a URL .SH SYNOPSIS .B curl [options] .I [URL...] .SH DESCRIPTION .B curl is a tool to transfer data from or to a server, using one of the supported protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP or FILE). The command is designed to work without user interaction. curl offers a busload of useful tricks like proxy support, user authentication, ftp upload, HTTP post, SSL connections, cookies, file transfer resume and more. As you will see below, the number of features will make your head spin! curl is powered by libcurl for all transfer-related features. See .BR libcurl (3) for details. .SH URL The URL syntax is protocol dependent. You'll find a detailed description in RFC 3986. You can specify multiple URLs or parts of URLs by writing part sets within braces as in: http://site.{one,two,three}.com or you can get sequences of alphanumeric series by using [] as in: ftp://ftp.numericals.com/file[1-100].txt ftp://ftp.numericals.com/file[001-100].txt (with leading zeros) ftp://ftp.letters.com/file[a-z].txt No nesting of the sequences is supported at the moment, but you can use several ones next to each other: http://any.org/archive[1996-1999]/vol[1-4]/part{a,b,c}.html You can specify any amount of URLs on the command line. They will be fetched in a sequential manner in the specified order. Since curl 7.15.1 you can also specify step counter for the ranges, so that you can get every Nth number or letter: http://www.numericals.com/file[1-100:10].txt http://www.letters.com/file[a-z:2].txt If you specify URL without protocol:// prefix, curl will attempt to guess what protocol you might want. It will then default to HTTP but try other protocols based on often-used host name prefixes. For example, for host names starting with "ftp." curl will assume you want to speak FTP. Curl will attempt to re-use connections for multiple file transfers, so that getting many files from the same server will not do multiple connects / handshakes. This improves speed. Of course this is only done on files specified on a single command line and cannot be used between separate curl invokes. .SH "PROGRESS METER" curl normally displays a progress meter during operations, indicating amount of transferred data, transfer speeds and estimated time left etc. However, since curl displays data to the terminal by default, if you invoke curl to do an operation and it is about to write data to the terminal, it \fIdisables\fP the progress meter as otherwise it would mess up the output mixing progress meter and response data. If you want a progress meter for HTTP POST or PUT requests, you need to redirect the response output to a file, using shell redirect (>), -o [file] or similar. It is not the same case for FTP upload as that operation is not spitting out any response data to the terminal. If you prefer a progress "bar" instead of the regular meter, \fI-#\fP is your friend. .SH OPTIONS In general, all boolean options are enabled with --option and yet again disabled with --\fBno-\fPoption. That is, you use the exact same option name but prefix it with "no-". However, in this list we mostly only list and show the --option version of them. (This concept with --no options was added in 7.19.0. Previously most options were toggled on/off on repeated use of the same command line option.) .IP "-a/--append" (FTP) When used in an FTP upload, this will tell curl to append to the target file instead of overwriting it. If the file doesn't exist, it will be created. .IP "-A/--user-agent " (HTTP) Specify the User-Agent string to send to the HTTP server. Some badly done CGIs fail if this field isn't set to "Mozilla/4.0". To encode blanks in the string, surround the string with single quote marks. This can also be set with the \fI-H/--header\fP option of course. If this option is set more than once, the last one will be the one that's used. .IP "--anyauth" (HTTP) Tells curl to figure out authentication method by itself, and use the most secure one the remote site claims it supports. This is done by first doing a request and checking the response-headers, thus possibly inducing an extra network round-trip. This is used instead of setting a specific authentication method, which you can do with \fI--basic\fP, \fI--digest\fP, \fI--ntlm\fP, and \fI--negotiate\fP. Note that using --anyauth is not recommended if you do uploads from stdin, since it may require data to be sent twice and then the client must be able to rewind. If the need should arise when uploading from stdin, the upload operation will fail. .IP "-b/--cookie " (HTTP) Pass the data to the HTTP server as a cookie. It is supposedly the data previously received from the server in a "Set-Cookie:" line. The data should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2". If no '=' letter is used in the line, it is treated as a filename to use to read previously stored cookie lines from, which should be used in this session if they match. Using this method also activates the "cookie parser" which will make curl record incoming cookies too, which may be handy if you're using this in combination with the \fI-L/--location\fP option. The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format. \fBNOTE\fP that the file specified with \fI-b/--cookie\fP is only used as input. No cookies will be stored in the file. To store cookies, use the \fI-c/--cookie-jar\fP option or you could even save the HTTP headers to a file using \fI-D/--dump-header\fP! If this option is set more than once, the last one will be the one that's used. .IP "-B/--use-ascii" Enable ASCII transfer when using FTP or LDAP. For FTP, this can also be enforced by using an URL that ends with ";type=A". This option causes data sent to stdout to be in text mode for win32 systems. .IP "--basic" (HTTP) Tells curl to use HTTP Basic authentication. This is the default and this option is usually pointless, unless you use it to override a previously set option that sets a different authentication method (such as \fI--ntlm\fP, \fI--digest\fP and \fI--negotiate\fP). .IP "--ciphers " (SSL) Specifies which ciphers to use in the connection. The list of ciphers must be using valid ciphers. Read up on SSL cipher list details on this URL: \fIhttp://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html\fP NSS ciphers are done differently than OpenSSL and GnuTLS. The full list of NSS ciphers is in the NSSCipherSuite entry at this URL: \fIhttp://directory.fedora.redhat.com/docs/mod_nss.html#Directives\fP If this option is used several times, the last one will override the others. .IP "--compressed" (HTTP) Request a compressed response using one of the algorithms libcurl supports, and return the uncompressed document. If this option is used and the server sends an unsupported encoding, curl will report an error. .IP "--connect-timeout " Maximum time in seconds that you allow the connection to the server to take. This only limits the connection phase, once curl has connected this option is of no more use. See also the \fI-m/--max-time\fP option. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-c/--cookie-jar " Specify to which file you want curl to write all cookies after a completed operation. Curl writes all cookies previously read from a specified file as well as all cookies received from remote server(s). If no cookies are known, no file will be written. The file will be written using the Netscape cookie file format. If you set the file name to a single dash, "-", the cookies will be written to stdout. .B NOTE If the cookie jar can't be created or written to, the whole curl operation won't fail or even report an error clearly. Using -v will get a warning displayed, but that is the only visible feedback you get about this possibly lethal situation. If this option is used several times, the last specified file name will be used. .IP "-C/--continue-at " Continue/Resume a previous file transfer at the given offset. The given offset is the exact number of bytes that will be skipped counted from the beginning of the source file before it is transferred to the destination. If used with uploads, the ftp server command SIZE will not be used by curl. Use "-C -" to tell curl to automatically find out where/how to resume the transfer. It then uses the given output/input files to figure that out. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--create-dirs" When used in conjunction with the -o option, curl will create the necessary local directory hierarchy as needed. This option creates the dirs mentioned with the -o option, nothing else. If the -o file name uses no dir or if the dirs it mentions already exist, no dir will be created. To create remote directories when using FTP or SFTP, try \fI--ftp-create-dirs\fP. .IP "--crlf" (FTP) Convert LF to CRLF in upload. Useful for MVS (OS/390). .IP "-d/--data " (HTTP) Sends the specified data in a POST request to the HTTP server, in the same way that a browser does when a user has filled in an HTML form and presses the submit button. This will cause curl to pass the data to the server using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Compare to \fI-F/--form\fP. \fI-d/--data\fP is the same as \fI--data-ascii\fP. To post data purely binary, you should instead use the \fI--data-binary\fP option. To URL encode the value of a form field you may use \fI--data-urlencode\fP. If any of these options is used more than once on the same command line, the data pieces specified will be merged together with a separating &-letter. Thus, using '-d name=daniel -d skill=lousy' would generate a post chunk that looks like \&'name=daniel&skill=lousy'. If you start the data with the letter @, the rest should be a file name to read the data from, or - if you want curl to read the data from stdin. The contents of the file must already be url-encoded. Multiple files can also be specified. Posting data from a file named 'foobar' would thus be done with \fI--data @foobar\fP. .IP "--data-binary " (HTTP) This posts data exactly as specified with no extra processing whatsoever. If you start the data with the letter @, the rest should be a filename. Data is posted in a similar manner as \fI--data-ascii\fP does, except that newlines are preserved and conversions are never done. If this option is used several times, the ones following the first will append data. As described in \fI-d/--data\fP. .IP "--data-urlencode " (HTTP) This posts data, similar to the other --data options with the exception that this performs URL encoding. (Added in 7.18.0) To be CGI compliant, the part should begin with a \fIname\fP followed by a separator and a content specification. The part can be passed to curl using one of the following syntaxes: .RS .IP "content" This will make curl URL encode the content and pass that on. Just be careful so that the content doesn't contain any = or @ letters, as that will then make the syntax match one of the other cases below! .IP "=content" This will make curl URL encode the content and pass that on. The preceding = letter is not included in the data. .IP "name=content" This will make curl URL encode the content part and pass that on. Note that the name part is expected to be URL encoded already. .IP "@filename" This will make curl load data from the given file (including any newlines), URL encode that data and pass it on in the POST. .IP "name@filename" This will make curl load data from the given file (including any newlines), URL encode that data and pass it on in the POST. The name part gets an equal sign appended, resulting in \fIname=urlencoded-file-content\fP. Note that the name is expected to be URL encoded already. .RE .IP "--digest" (HTTP) Enables HTTP Digest authentication. This is a authentication that prevents the password from being sent over the wire in clear text. Use this in combination with the normal \fI-u/--user\fP option to set user name and password. See also \fI--ntlm\fP, \fI--negotiate\fP and \fI--anyauth\fP for related options. If this option is used several times, the following occurrences make no difference. .IP "--disable-eprt" (FTP) Tell curl to disable the use of the EPRT and LPRT commands when doing active FTP transfers. Curl will normally always first attempt to use EPRT, then LPRT before using PORT, but with this option, it will use PORT right away. EPRT and LPRT are extensions to the original FTP protocol, may not work on all servers but enable more functionality in a better way than the traditional PORT command. Since curl 7.19.0, \fB--eprt\fP can be used to explicitly enable EPRT again and \fB--no-eprt\fP is an alias for \fB--disable-eprt\fP. .IP "--disable-epsv" (FTP) Tell curl to disable the use of the EPSV command when doing passive FTP transfers. Curl will normally always first attempt to use EPSV before PASV, but with this option, it will not try using EPSV. Since curl 7.19.0, \fB--epsv\fP can be used to explicitly enable EPRT again and \fB--no-epsv\fP is an alias for \fB--disable-epsv\fP. .IP "-D/--dump-header " Write the protocol headers to the specified file. This option is handy to use when you want to store the headers that a HTTP site sends to you. Cookies from the headers could then be read in a second curl invoke by using the \fI-b/--cookie\fP option! The \fI-c/--cookie-jar\fP option is however a better way to store cookies. When used on FTP, the ftp server response lines are considered being "headers" and thus are saved there. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-e/--referer " (HTTP) Sends the "Referer Page" information to the HTTP server. This can also be set with the \fI-H/--header\fP flag of course. When used with \fI-L/--location\fP you can append ";auto" to the --referer URL to make curl automatically set the previous URL when it follows a Location: header. The \&";auto" string can be used alone, even if you don't set an initial --referer. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--engine " Select the OpenSSL crypto engine to use for cipher operations. Use \fI--engine list\fP to print a list of build-time supported engines. Note that not all (or none) of the engines may be available at run-time. .IP "--environment" (RISC OS ONLY) Sets a range of environment variables, using the names the -w option supports, to easier allow extraction of useful information after having run curl. .IP "--egd-file " (SSL) Specify the path name to the Entropy Gathering Daemon socket. The socket is used to seed the random engine for SSL connections. See also the \fI--random-file\fP option. .IP "-E/--cert " (SSL) Tells curl to use the specified certificate file when getting a file with HTTPS or FTPS. The certificate must be in PEM format. If the optional password isn't specified, it will be queried for on the terminal. Note that this option assumes a \&"certificate" file that is the private key and the private certificate concatenated! See \fI--cert\fP and \fI--key\fP to specify them independently. If curl is built against the NSS SSL library then this option tells curl the nickname of the certificate to use within the NSS database defined by the environment variable SSL_DIR (or by default /etc/pki/nssdb). If the NSS PEM PKCS#11 module (libnsspem.so) is available then PEM files may be loaded. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--cert-type " (SSL) Tells curl what certificate type the provided certificate is in. PEM, DER and ENG are recognized types. If not specified, PEM is assumed. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--cacert " (SSL) Tells curl to use the specified certificate file to verify the peer. The file may contain multiple CA certificates. The certificate(s) must be in PEM format. Normally curl is built to use a default file for this, so this option is typically used to alter that default file. curl recognizes the environment variable named 'CURL_CA_BUNDLE' if that is set, and uses the given path as a path to a CA cert bundle. This option overrides that variable. The windows version of curl will automatically look for a CA certs file named \'curl-ca-bundle.crt\', either in the same directory as curl.exe, or in the Current Working Directory, or in any folder along your PATH. If curl is built against the NSS SSL library then this option tells curl the nickname of the CA certificate to use within the NSS database defined by the environment variable SSL_DIR (or by default /etc/pki/nssdb). If the NSS PEM PKCS#11 module (libnsspem.so) is available then PEM files may be loaded. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--capath " (SSL) Tells curl to use the specified certificate directory to verify the peer. The certificates must be in PEM format, and the directory must have been processed using the c_rehash utility supplied with openssl. Using \fI--capath\fP can allow curl to make SSL-connections much more efficiently than using \fI--cacert\fP if the \fI--cacert\fP file contains many CA certificates. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-f/--fail" (HTTP) Fail silently (no output at all) on server errors. This is mostly done like this to better enable scripts etc to better deal with failed attempts. In normal cases when a HTTP server fails to deliver a document, it returns an HTML document stating so (which often also describes why and more). This flag will prevent curl from outputting that and return error 22. This method is not fail-safe and there are occasions where non-successful response codes will slip through, especially when authentication is involved (response codes 401 and 407). .IP "--ftp-account [data]" (FTP) When an FTP server asks for "account data" after user name and password has been provided, this data is sent off using the ACCT command. (Added in 7.13.0) If this option is used twice, the second will override the previous use. .IP "--ftp-create-dirs" (FTP/SFTP) When an FTP or SFTP URL/operation uses a path that doesn't currently exist on the server, the standard behavior of curl is to fail. Using this option, curl will instead attempt to create missing directories. .IP "--ftp-method [method]" (FTP) Control what method curl should use to reach a file on a FTP(S) server. The method argument should be one of the following alternatives: .RS .IP multicwd curl does a single CWD operation for each path part in the given URL. For deep hierarchies this means very many commands. This is how RFC1738 says it should be done. This is the default but the slowest behavior. .IP nocwd curl does no CWD at all. curl will do SIZE, RETR, STOR etc and give a full path to the server for all these commands. This is the fastest behavior. .IP singlecwd curl does one CWD with the full target directory and then operates on the file \&"normally" (like in the multicwd case). This is somewhat more standards compliant than 'nocwd' but without the full penalty of 'multicwd'. .RE .IP "--ftp-pasv" (FTP) Use PASV when transferring. PASV is the internal default behavior, but using this option can be used to override a previous --ftp-port option. (Added in 7.11.0) If this option is used several times, the following occurrences make no difference. Undoing an enforced PASV really isn't doable but you must then instead enforce the correct EPRT again. .IP "--ftp-alternative-to-user " (FTP) If authenticating with the USER and PASS commands fails, send this command. When connecting to Tumbleweed's Secure Transport server over FTPS using a client certificate, using "SITE AUTH" will tell the server to retrieve the username from the certificate. (Added in 7.15.5) .IP "--ftp-skip-pasv-ip" (FTP) Tell curl to not use the IP address the server suggests in its response to curl's PASV command when curl connects the data connection. Instead curl will re-use the same IP address it already uses for the control connection. (Added in 7.14.2) This option has no effect if PORT, EPRT or EPSV is used instead of PASV. .IP "--ftp-ssl" (FTP) Try to use SSL/TLS for the FTP connection. Reverts to a non-secure connection if the server doesn't support SSL/TLS. See also \fI--ftp-ssl-control\fP and \fI--ftp-ssl-reqd\fP for different levels of encryption required. (Added in 7.11.0) .IP "--ftp-ssl-control" (FTP) Require SSL/TLS for the ftp login, clear for transfer. Allows secure authentication, but non-encrypted data transfers for efficiency. Fails the transfer if the server doesn't support SSL/TLS. (Added in 7.16.0) .IP "--ftp-ssl-reqd" (FTP) Require SSL/TLS for the FTP connection. Terminates the connection if the server doesn't support SSL/TLS. (Added in 7.15.5) .IP "--ftp-ssl-ccc" (FTP) Use CCC (Clear Command Channel) Shuts down the SSL/TLS layer after authenticating. The rest of the control channel communication will be unencrypted. This allows NAT routers to follow the FTP transaction. The default mode is passive. See --ftp-ssl-ccc-mode for other modes. (Added in 7.16.1) .IP "--ftp-ssl-ccc-mode [active/passive]" (FTP) Use CCC (Clear Command Channel) Sets the CCC mode. The passive mode will not initiate the shutdown, but instead wait for the server to do it, and will not reply to the shutdown from the server. The active mode initiates the shutdown and waits for a reply from the server. (Added in 7.16.2) .IP "-F/--form " (HTTP) This lets curl emulate a filled in form in which a user has pressed the submit button. This causes curl to POST data using the Content-Type multipart/form-data according to RFC1867. This enables uploading of binary files etc. To force the 'content' part to be a file, prefix the file name with an @ sign. To just get the content part from a file, prefix the file name with the letter <. The difference between @ and < is then that @ makes a file get attached in the post as a file upload, while the < makes a text field and just get the contents for that text field from a file. Example, to send your password file to the server, where \&'password' is the name of the form-field to which /etc/passwd will be the input: \fBcurl\fP -F password=@/etc/passwd www.mypasswords.com To read the file's content from stdin instead of a file, use - where the file name should've been. This goes for both @ and < constructs. You can also tell curl what Content-Type to use by using 'type=', in a manner similar to: \fBcurl\fP -F "web=@index.html;type=text/html" url.com or \fBcurl\fP -F "name=daniel;type=text/foo" url.com You can also explicitly change the name field of an file upload part by setting filename=, like this: \fBcurl\fP -F "file=@localfile;filename=nameinpost" url.com See further examples and details in the MANUAL. This option can be used multiple times. .IP "--form-string " (HTTP) Similar to \fI--form\fP except that the value string for the named parameter is used literally. Leading \&'@' and \&'<' characters, and the \&';type=' string in the value have no special meaning. Use this in preference to \fI--form\fP if there's any possibility that the string value may accidentally trigger the \&'@' or \&'<' features of \fI--form\fP. .IP "-g/--globoff" This option switches off the "URL globbing parser". When you set this option, you can specify URLs that contain the letters {}[] without having them being interpreted by curl itself. Note that these letters are not normal legal URL contents but they should be encoded according to the URI standard. .IP "-G/--get" When used, this option will make all data specified with \fI-d/--data\fP or \fI--data-binary\fP to be used in a HTTP GET request instead of the POST request that otherwise would be used. The data will be appended to the URL with a '?' separator. If used in combination with -I, the POST data will instead be appended to the URL with a HEAD request. If this option is used several times, the following occurrences make no difference. This is because undoing a GET doesn't make sense, but you should then instead enforce the alternative method you prefer. .IP "-h/--help" Usage help. .IP "-H/--header
" (HTTP) Extra header to use when getting a web page. You may specify any number of extra headers. Note that if you should add a custom header that has the same name as one of the internal ones curl would use, your externally set header will be used instead of the internal one. This allows you to make even trickier stuff than curl would normally do. You should not replace internally set headers without knowing perfectly well what you're doing. Remove an internal header by giving a replacement without content on the right side of the colon, as in: -H \&"Host:". curl will make sure that each header you add/replace get sent with the proper end of line marker, you should thus \fBnot\fP add that as a part of the header content: do not add newlines or carriage returns they will only mess things up for you. See also the \fI-A/--user-agent\fP and \fI-e/--referer\fP options. This option can be used multiple times to add/replace/remove multiple headers. .IP "--hostpubmd5 " Pass a string containing 32 hexadecimal digits. The string should be the 128 bit MD5 checksum of the remote host's public key, curl will refuse the connection with the host unless the md5sums match. This option is only for SCP and SFTP transfers. (Added in 7.17.1) .IP "--ignore-content-length" (HTTP) Ignore the Content-Length header. This is particularly useful for servers running Apache 1.x, which will report incorrect Content-Length for files larger than 2 gigabytes. .IP "-i/--include" (HTTP) Include the HTTP-header in the output. The HTTP-header includes things like server-name, date of the document, HTTP-version and more... .IP "--interface " Perform an operation using a specified interface. You can enter interface name, IP address or host name. An example could look like: curl --interface eth0:1 http://www.netscape.com/ If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-I/--head" (HTTP/FTP/FILE) Fetch the HTTP-header only! HTTP-servers feature the command HEAD which this uses to get nothing but the header of a document. When used on a FTP or FILE file, curl displays the file size and last modification time only. .IP "-j/--junk-session-cookies" (HTTP) When curl is told to read cookies from a given file, this option will make it discard all "session cookies". This will basically have the same effect as if a new session is started. Typical browsers always discard session cookies when they're closed down. .IP "-k/--insecure" (SSL) This option explicitly allows curl to perform "insecure" SSL connections and transfers. All SSL connections are attempted to be made secure by using the CA certificate bundle installed by default. This makes all connections considered "insecure" to fail unless \fI-k/--insecure\fP is used. See this online resource for further details: \fBhttp://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html\fP .IP "--keepalive-time " This option sets the time a connection needs to remain idle before sending keepalive probes and the time between individual keepalive probes. It is currently effective on operating systems offering the TCP_KEEPIDLE and TCP_KEEPINTVL socket options (meaning Linux, recent AIX, HP-UX and more). This option has no effect if \fI--no-keepalive\fP is used. (Added in 7.18.0) If this option is used multiple times, the last occurrence sets the amount. .IP "--key " (SSL/SSH) Private key file name. Allows you to provide your private key in this separate file. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--key-type " (SSL) Private key file type. Specify which type your \fI--key\fP provided private key is. DER, PEM and ENG are supported. If not specified, PEM is assumed. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--krb " (FTP) Enable Kerberos authentication and use. The level must be entered and should be one of 'clear', 'safe', 'confidential' or 'private'. Should you use a level that is not one of these, 'private' will instead be used. This option requires that the library was built with kerberos4 or GSSAPI (GSS-Negotiate) support. This is not very common. Use \fI-V/--version\fP to see if your curl supports it. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-K/--config " Specify which config file to read curl arguments from. The config file is a text file in which command line arguments can be written which then will be used as if they were written on the actual command line. Options and their parameters must be specified on the same config file line, separated by white space, colon, the equals sign or any combination thereof (however, the preferred separator is the equals sign). If the parameter is to contain white spaces, the parameter must be enclosed within quotes. Within double quotes, the following escape sequences are available: \\\\, \\", \\t, \\n, \\r and \\v. A backlash preceding any other letter is ignored. If the first column of a config line is a '#' character, the rest of the line will be treated as a comment. Only write one option per physical line in the config file. Specify the filename to -K/--config as '-' to make curl read the file from stdin. Note that to be able to specify a URL in the config file, you need to specify it using the \fI--url\fP option, and not by simply writing the URL on its own line. So, it could look similar to this: url = "http://curl.haxx.se/docs/" Long option names can optionally be given in the config file without the initial double dashes. When curl is invoked, it always (unless \fI-q\fP is used) checks for a default config file and uses it if found. The default config file is checked for in the following places in this order: 1) curl tries to find the "home dir": It first checks for the CURL_HOME and then the HOME environment variables. Failing that, it uses getpwuid() on unix-like systems (which returns the home dir given the current user in your system). On Windows, it then checks for the APPDATA variable, or as a last resort the '%USERPROFILE%\Application Data'. 2) On windows, if there is no _curlrc file in the home dir, it checks for one in the same dir the executable curl is placed. On unix-like systems, it will simply try to load .curlrc from the determined home dir. .nf # --- Example file --- # this is a comment url = "curl.haxx.se" output = "curlhere.html" user-agent = "superagent/1.0" # and fetch another URL too url = "curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html" -O referer = "http://nowhereatall.com/" # --- End of example file --- .fi This option can be used multiple times to load multiple config files. .IP "--libcurl " Append this option to any ordinary curl command line, and you will get a libcurl-using source code written to the file that does the equivalent operation of what your command line operation does! NOTE: this does not properly support -F and the sending of multipart formposts, so in those cases the output program will be missing necessary calls to \fIcurl_formadd(3)\fP, and possibly more. If this option is used several times, the last given file name will be used. (Added in 7.16.1) .IP "--limit-rate " Specify the maximum transfer rate you want curl to use. This feature is useful if you have a limited pipe and you'd like your transfer not use your entire bandwidth. The given speed is measured in bytes/second, unless a suffix is appended. Appending 'k' or 'K' will count the number as kilobytes, 'm' or M' makes it megabytes while 'g' or 'G' makes it gigabytes. Examples: 200K, 3m and 1G. The given rate is the average speed, counted during the entire transfer. It means that curl might use higher transfer speeds in short bursts, but over time it uses no more than the given rate. If you are also using the \fI-Y/--speed-limit\fP option, that option will take precedence and might cripple the rate-limiting slightly, to help keeping the speed-limit logic working. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-l/--list-only" (FTP) When listing an FTP directory, this switch forces a name-only view. Especially useful if you want to machine-parse the contents of an FTP directory since the normal directory view doesn't use a standard look or format. This option causes an FTP NLST command to be sent. Some FTP servers list only files in their response to NLST; they do not include subdirectories and symbolic links. .IP "--local-port [-num]" Set a preferred number or range of local port numbers to use for the connection(s). Note that port numbers by nature is a scarce resource that will be busy at times so setting this range to something too narrow might cause unnecessary connection setup failures. (Added in 7.15.2) .IP "-L/--location" (HTTP/HTTPS) If the server reports that the requested page has moved to a different location (indicated with a Location: header and a 3XX response code) this option will make curl redo the request on the new place. If used together with \fI-i/--include\fP or \fI-I/--head\fP, headers from all requested pages will be shown. When authentication is used, curl only sends its credentials to the initial host. If a redirect takes curl to a different host, it won't be able to intercept the user+password. See also \fI--location-trusted\fP on how to change this. You can limit the amount of redirects to follow by using the \fI--max-redirs\fP option. When curl follows a redirect and the request is not a plain GET (for example POST or PUT), it will do the following request with a GET if the HTTP response was 301, 302, or 303. If the response code was any other 3xx code, curl will re-send the following request using the same unmodified method. .IP "--location-trusted" (HTTP/HTTPS) Like \fI-L/--location\fP, but will allow sending the name + password to all hosts that the site may redirect to. This may or may not introduce a security breach if the site redirects you do a site to which you'll send your authentication info (which is plaintext in the case of HTTP Basic authentication). .IP "--max-filesize " Specify the maximum size (in bytes) of a file to download. If the file requested is larger than this value, the transfer will not start and curl will return with exit code 63. NOTE: The file size is not always known prior to download, and for such files this option has no effect even if the file transfer ends up being larger than this given limit. This concerns both FTP and HTTP transfers. .IP "-m/--max-time " Maximum time in seconds that you allow the whole operation to take. This is useful for preventing your batch jobs from hanging for hours due to slow networks or links going down. See also the \fI--connect-timeout\fP option. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-M/--manual" Manual. Display the huge help text. .IP "-n/--netrc" Makes curl scan the \fI.netrc\fP file in the user's home directory for login name and password. This is typically used for ftp on unix. If used with http, curl will enable user authentication. See .BR netrc(4) or .BR ftp(1) for details on the file format. Curl will not complain if that file hasn't the right permissions (it should not be world nor group readable). The environment variable "HOME" is used to find the home directory. A quick and very simple example of how to setup a \fI.netrc\fP to allow curl to ftp to the machine host.domain.com with user name \&'myself' and password \&'secret' should look similar to: .B "machine host.domain.com login myself password secret" .IP "--netrc-optional" Very similar to \fI--netrc\fP, but this option makes the .netrc usage \fBoptional\fP and not mandatory as the \fI--netrc\fP does. .IP "--negotiate" (HTTP) Enables GSS-Negotiate authentication. The GSS-Negotiate method was designed by Microsoft and is used in their web applications. It is primarily meant as a support for Kerberos5 authentication but may be also used along with another authentication methods. For more information see IETF draft draft-brezak-spnego-http-04.txt. If you want to enable Negotiate for your proxy authentication, then use \fI--proxy-negotiate\fP. This option requires that the library was built with GSSAPI support. This is not very common. Use \fI-V/--version\fP to see if your version supports GSS-Negotiate. When using this option, you must also provide a fake -u/--user option to activate the authentication code properly. Sending a '-u :' is enough as the user name and password from the -u option aren't actually used. If this option is used several times, the following occurrences make no difference. .IP "-N/--no-buffer" Disables the buffering of the output stream. In normal work situations, curl will use a standard buffered output stream that will have the effect that it will output the data in chunks, not necessarily exactly when the data arrives. Using this option will disable that buffering. Note that this is the negated option name documented. You can thus use \fI--buffer\fP to enforce the buffering. .IP "--no-keepalive" Disables the use of keepalive messages on the TCP connection, as by default curl enables them. Note that this is the negated option name documented. You can thus use \fI--keepalive\fP to enforce keepalive. .IP "--no-sessionid" (SSL) Disable curl's use of SSL session-ID caching. By default all transfers are done using the cache. Note that while nothing ever should get hurt by attempting to reuse SSL session-IDs, there seem to be broken SSL implementations in the wild that may require you to disable this in order for you to succeed. (Added in 7.16.0) Note that this is the negated option name documented. You can thus use \fI--sessionid\fP to enforce session-ID caching. .IP "--ntlm" (HTTP) Enables NTLM authentication. The NTLM authentication method was designed by Microsoft and is used by IIS web servers. It is a proprietary protocol, reversed engineered by clever people and implemented in curl based on their efforts. This kind of behavior should not be endorsed, you should encourage everyone who uses NTLM to switch to a public and documented authentication method instead. Such as Digest. If you want to enable NTLM for your proxy authentication, then use \fI--proxy-ntlm\fP. This option requires that the library was built with SSL support. Use \fI-V/--version\fP to see if your curl supports NTLM. If this option is used several times, the following occurrences make no difference. .IP "-o/--output " Write output to instead of stdout. If you are using {} or [] to fetch multiple documents, you can use '#' followed by a number in the specifier. That variable will be replaced with the current string for the URL being fetched. Like in: curl http://{one,two}.site.com -o "file_#1.txt" or use several variables like: curl http://{site,host}.host[1-5].com -o "#1_#2" You may use this option as many times as you have number of URLs. See also the \fI--create-dirs\fP option to create the local directories dynamically. .IP "-O/--remote-name" Write output to a local file named like the remote file we get. (Only the file part of the remote file is used, the path is cut off.) The remote file name to use for saving is extracted from the given URL, nothing else. You may use this option as many times as you have number of URLs. .IP "--pass " (SSL/SSH) Pass phrase for the private key If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--post301" Tells curl to respect RFC 2616/10.3.2 and not convert POST requests into GET requests when following a 301 redirection. The non-RFC behaviour is ubiquitous in web browsers, so curl does the conversion by default to maintain consistency. However, a server may requires a POST to remain a POST after such a redirection. This option is meaningful only when using \fI-L/--location\fP (Added in 7.17.1) .IP "--proxy-anyauth" Tells curl to pick a suitable authentication method when communicating with the given proxy. This might cause an extra request/response round-trip. (Added in 7.13.2) .IP "--proxy-basic" Tells curl to use HTTP Basic authentication when communicating with the given proxy. Use \fI--basic\fP for enabling HTTP Basic with a remote host. Basic is the default authentication method curl uses with proxies. .IP "--proxy-digest" Tells curl to use HTTP Digest authentication when communicating with the given proxy. Use \fI--digest\fP for enabling HTTP Digest with a remote host. .IP "--proxy-negotiate" Tells curl to use HTTP Negotiate authentication when communicating with the given proxy. Use \fI--negotiate\fP for enabling HTTP Negotiate with a remote host. (Added in 7.17.1) .IP "--proxy-ntlm" Tells curl to use HTTP NTLM authentication when communicating with the given proxy. Use \fI--ntlm\fP for enabling NTLM with a remote host. .IP "-p/--proxytunnel" When an HTTP proxy is used (\fI-x/--proxy\fP), this option will cause non-HTTP protocols to attempt to tunnel through the proxy instead of merely using it to do HTTP-like operations. The tunnel approach is made with the HTTP proxy CONNECT request and requires that the proxy allows direct connect to the remote port number curl wants to tunnel through to. .IP "--pubkey " (SSH) Public key file name. Allows you to provide your public key in this separate file. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-P/--ftp-port
" (FTP) Reverses the initiator/listener roles when connecting with ftp. This switch makes Curl use the PORT command instead of PASV. In practise, PORT tells the server to connect to the client's specified address and port, while PASV asks the server for an ip address and port to connect to.
should be one of: .RS .IP interface i.e "eth0" to specify which interface's IP address you want to use (Unix only) .IP "IP address" i.e "192.168.10.1" to specify exact IP number .IP "host name" i.e "my.host.domain" to specify machine .IP "-" make curl pick the same IP address that is already used for the control connection .RE If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. Disable the use of PORT with \fI--ftp-pasv\fP. Disable the attempt to use the EPRT command instead of PORT by using \fI--disable-eprt\fP. EPRT is really PORT++. .IP "-q" If used as the first parameter on the command line, the \fIcurlrc\fP config file will not be read and used. See the \fI-K/--config\fP for details on the default config file search path. .IP "-Q/--quote " (FTP/SFTP) Send an arbitrary command to the remote FTP or SFTP server. Quote commands are sent BEFORE the transfer is taking place (just after the initial PWD command in an FTP transfer, to be exact). To make commands take place after a successful transfer, prefix them with a dash '-'. To make commands get sent after libcurl has changed working directory, just before the transfer command(s), prefix the command with '+' (this is only supported for FTP). You may specify any number of commands. If the server returns failure for one of the commands, the entire operation will be aborted. You must send syntactically correct FTP commands as RFC959 defines to FTP servers, or one of the following commands (with appropriate arguments) to SFTP servers: chgrp, chmod, chown, ln, mkdir, pwd, rename, rm, rmdir, symlink. This option can be used multiple times. .IP "--random-file " (SSL) Specify the path name to file containing what will be considered as random data. The data is used to seed the random engine for SSL connections. See also the \fI--egd-file\fP option. .IP "-r/--range " (HTTP/FTP/FILE) Retrieve a byte range (i.e a partial document) from a HTTP/1.1, FTP server or a local FILE. Ranges can be specified in a number of ways. .RS .TP 10 .B 0-499 specifies the first 500 bytes .TP .B 500-999 specifies the second 500 bytes .TP .B -500 specifies the last 500 bytes .TP .B 9500- specifies the bytes from offset 9500 and forward .TP .B 0-0,-1 specifies the first and last byte only(*)(H) .TP .B 500-700,600-799 specifies 300 bytes from offset 500(H) .TP .B 100-199,500-599 specifies two separate 100 bytes ranges(*)(H) .RE (*) = NOTE that this will cause the server to reply with a multipart response! Only digit characters (0-9) are valid in 'start' and 'stop' of range syntax \&'start-stop'. If a non-digit character is given in the range, the server's response will be indeterminable, depending on different server's configuration. You should also be aware that many HTTP/1.1 servers do not have this feature enabled, so that when you attempt to get a range, you'll instead get the whole document. FTP range downloads only support the simple syntax 'start-stop' (optionally with one of the numbers omitted). It depends on the non-RFC command SIZE. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--raw" When used, it disables all internal HTTP decoding of content or transfer encodings and instead makes them passed on unaltered, raw. (Added in 7.16.2) .IP "-R/--remote-time" When used, this will make libcurl attempt to figure out the timestamp of the remote file, and if that is available make the local file get that same timestamp. .IP "--retry " If a transient error is returned when curl tries to perform a transfer, it will retry this number of times before giving up. Setting the number to 0 makes curl do no retries (which is the default). Transient error means either: a timeout, an FTP 5xx response code or an HTTP 5xx response code. When curl is about to retry a transfer, it will first wait one second and then for all forthcoming retries it will double the waiting time until it reaches 10 minutes which then will be the delay between the rest of the retries. By using \fI--retry-delay\fP you disable this exponential backoff algorithm. See also \fI--retry-max-time\fP to limit the total time allowed for retries. (Added in 7.12.3) If this option is used multiple times, the last occurrence decide the amount. .IP "--retry-delay " Make curl sleep this amount of time between each retry when a transfer has failed with a transient error (it changes the default backoff time algorithm between retries). This option is only interesting if \fI--retry\fP is also used. Setting this delay to zero will make curl use the default backoff time. (Added in 7.12.3) If this option is used multiple times, the last occurrence decide the amount. .IP "--retry-max-time " The retry timer is reset before the first transfer attempt. Retries will be done as usual (see \fI--retry\fP) as long as the timer hasn't reached this given limit. Notice that if the timer hasn't reached the limit, the request will be made and while performing, it may take longer than this given time period. To limit a single request\'s maximum time, use \fI-m/--max-time\fP. Set this option to zero to not timeout retries. (Added in 7.12.3) If this option is used multiple times, the last occurrence decide the amount. .IP "-s/--silent" Silent mode. Don't show progress meter or error messages. Makes Curl mute. .IP "-S/--show-error" When used with -s it makes curl show error message if it fails. .IP "--socks4 " Use the specified SOCKS4 proxy. If the port number is not specified, it is assumed at port 1080. (Added in 7.15.2) This option overrides any previous use of \fI-x/--proxy\fP, as they are mutually exclusive. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--socks4a " Use the specified SOCKS4a proxy. If the port number is not specified, it is assumed at port 1080. (Added in 7.18.0) This option overrides any previous use of \fI-x/--proxy\fP, as they are mutually exclusive. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--socks5-hostname " Use the specified SOCKS5 proxy (and let the proxy resolve the host name). If the port number is not specified, it is assumed at port 1080. (Added in 7.18.0) This option overrides any previous use of \fI-x/--proxy\fP, as they are mutually exclusive. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. (This option was previously wrongly documented and used as --socks without the number appended.) .IP "--socks5 " Use the specified SOCKS5 proxy - but resolve the host name locally. If the port number is not specified, it is assumed at port 1080. This option overrides any previous use of \fI-x/--proxy\fP, as they are mutually exclusive. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. (This option was previously wrongly documented and used as --socks without the number appended.) .IP "--stderr " Redirect all writes to stderr to the specified file instead. If the file name is a plain '-', it is instead written to stdout. This option has no point when you're using a shell with decent redirecting capabilities. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--tcp-nodelay" Turn on the TCP_NODELAY option. See the \fIcurl_easy_setopt(3)\fP man page for details about this option. (Added in 7.11.2) .IP "-t/--telnet-option " Pass options to the telnet protocol. Supported options are: TTYPE= Sets the terminal type. XDISPLOC= Sets the X display location. NEW_ENV= Sets an environment variable. .IP "-T/--upload-file " This transfers the specified local file to the remote URL. If there is no file part in the specified URL, Curl will append the local file name. NOTE that you must use a trailing / on the last directory to really prove to Curl that there is no file name or curl will think that your last directory name is the remote file name to use. That will most likely cause the upload operation to fail. If this is used on a http(s) server, the PUT command will be used. Use the file name "-" (a single dash) to use stdin instead of a given file. You can specify one -T for each URL on the command line. Each -T + URL pair specifies what to upload and to where. curl also supports "globbing" of the -T argument, meaning that you can upload multiple files to a single URL by using the same URL globbing style supported in the URL, like this: curl -T "{file1,file2}" http://www.uploadtothissite.com or even curl -T "img[1-1000].png" ftp://ftp.picturemania.com/upload/ .IP "--trace " Enables a full trace dump of all incoming and outgoing data, including descriptive information, to the given output file. Use "-" as filename to have the output sent to stdout. This option overrides previous uses of \fI-v/--verbose\fP or \fI--trace-ascii\fP. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--trace-ascii " Enables a full trace dump of all incoming and outgoing data, including descriptive information, to the given output file. Use "-" as filename to have the output sent to stdout. This is very similar to \fI--trace\fP, but leaves out the hex part and only shows the ASCII part of the dump. It makes smaller output that might be easier to read for untrained humans. This option overrides previous uses of \fI-v/--verbose\fP or \fI--trace\fP. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--trace-time" Prepends a time stamp to each trace or verbose line that curl displays. (Added in 7.14.0) .IP "-u/--user " Specify user and password to use for server authentication. Overrides \fI-n/--netrc\fP and \fI--netrc-optional\fP. If you just give the user name (without entering a colon) curl will prompt for a password. If you use an SSPI-enabled curl binary and do NTLM authentication, you can force curl to pick up the user name and password from your environment by simply specifying a single colon with this option: "-u :". If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-U/--proxy-user " Specify user and password to use for proxy authentication. If you use an SSPI-enabled curl binary and do NTLM authentication, you can force curl to pick up the user name and password from your environment by simply specifying a single colon with this option: "-U :". If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "--url " Specify a URL to fetch. This option is mostly handy when you want to specify URL(s) in a config file. This option may be used any number of times. To control where this URL is written, use the \fI-o/--output\fP or the \fI-O/--remote-name\fP options. .IP "-v/--verbose" Makes the fetching more verbose/talkative. Mostly usable for debugging. Lines starting with '>' means "header data" sent by curl, '<' means "header data" received by curl that is hidden in normal cases and lines starting with '*' means additional info provided by curl. Note that if you only want HTTP headers in the output, \fI-i/--include\fP might be option you're looking for. If you think this option still doesn't give you enough details, consider using \fI--trace\fP or \fI--trace-ascii\fP instead. This option overrides previous uses of \fI--trace-ascii\fP or \fI--trace\fP. .IP "-V/--version" Displays information about curl and the libcurl version it uses. The first line includes the full version of curl, libcurl and other 3rd party libraries linked with the executable. The second line (starts with "Protocols:") shows all protocols that libcurl reports to support. The third line (starts with "Features:") shows specific features libcurl reports to offer. Available features include: .RS .IP "IPv6" You can use IPv6 with this. .IP "krb4" Krb4 for ftp is supported. .IP "SSL" HTTPS and FTPS are supported. .IP "libz" Automatic decompression of compressed files over HTTP is supported. .IP "NTLM" NTLM authentication is supported. .IP "GSS-Negotiate" Negotiate authentication and krb5 for ftp is supported. .IP "Debug" This curl uses a libcurl built with Debug. This enables more error-tracking and memory debugging etc. For curl-developers only! .IP "AsynchDNS" This curl uses asynchronous name resolves. .IP "SPNEGO" SPNEGO Negotiate authentication is supported. .IP "Largefile" This curl supports transfers of large files, files larger than 2GB. .IP "IDN" This curl supports IDN - international domain names. .IP "SSPI" SSPI is supported. If you use NTLM and set a blank user name, curl will authenticate with your current user and password. .RE .IP "-w/--write-out " Defines what to display on stdout after a completed and successful operation. The format is a string that may contain plain text mixed with any number of variables. The string can be specified as "string", to get read from a particular file you specify it "@filename" and to tell curl to read the format from stdin you write "@-". The variables present in the output format will be substituted by the value or text that curl thinks fit, as described below. All variables are specified like %{variable_name} and to output a normal % you just write them like %%. You can output a newline by using \\n, a carriage return with \\r and a tab space with \\t. .B NOTE: The %-letter is a special letter in the win32-environment, where all occurrences of % must be doubled when using this option. Available variables are at this point: .RS .TP 15 .B url_effective The URL that was fetched last. This is mostly meaningful if you've told curl to follow location: headers. .TP .B http_code The numerical response code that was found in the last retrieved HTTP(S) or FTP(s) transfer. In 7.18.2 the alias \fBresponse_code\fP was added to show the same info. .TP .B http_connect The numerical code that was found in the last response (from a proxy) to a curl CONNECT request. (Added in 7.12.4) .TP .B time_total The total time, in seconds, that the full operation lasted. The time will be displayed with millisecond resolution. .TP .B time_namelookup The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the name resolving was completed. .TP .B time_connect The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the TCP connect to the remote host (or proxy) was completed. .TP .B time_appconnect The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the SSL/SSH/etc connect/handshake to the remote host was completed. (Added in 7.19.0) .TP .B time_pretransfer The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the file transfer is just about to begin. This includes all pre-transfer commands and negotiations that are specific to the particular protocol(s) involved. .TP .B time_redirect The time, in seconds, it took for all redirection steps include name lookup, connect, pretransfer and transfer before final transaction was started. time_redirect shows the complete execution time for multiple redirections. (Added in 7.12.3) .TP .B time_starttransfer The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the first byte is just about to be transferred. This includes time_pretransfer and also the time the server needs to calculate the result. .TP .B size_download The total amount of bytes that were downloaded. .TP .B size_upload The total amount of bytes that were uploaded. .TP .B size_header The total amount of bytes of the downloaded headers. .TP .B size_request The total amount of bytes that were sent in the HTTP request. .TP .B speed_download The average download speed that curl measured for the complete download. .TP .B speed_upload The average upload speed that curl measured for the complete upload. .TP .B content_type The Content-Type of the requested document, if there was any. .TP .B num_connects Number of new connects made in the recent transfer. (Added in 7.12.3) .TP .B num_redirects Number of redirects that were followed in the request. (Added in 7.12.3) .TP .B redirect_url When a HTTP request was made without -L to follow redirects, this variable will show the actual URL a redirect \fIwould\fP take you to. (Added in 7.18.2) .TP .B ftp_entry_path The initial path libcurl ended up in when logging on to the remote FTP server. (Added in 7.15.4) .RE If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-x/--proxy " Use specified HTTP proxy. If the port number is not specified, it is assumed at port 1080. This option overrides existing environment variables that sets proxy to use. If there's an environment variable setting a proxy, you can set proxy to \&"" to override it. \fBNote\fP that all operations that are performed over a HTTP proxy will transparently be converted to HTTP. It means that certain protocol specific operations might not be available. This is not the case if you can tunnel through the proxy, as done with the \fI-p/--proxytunnel\fP option. Starting with 7.14.1, the proxy host can be specified the exact same way as the proxy environment variables, include protocol prefix (http://) and embedded user + password. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-X/--request " (HTTP) Specifies a custom request method to use when communicating with the HTTP server. The specified request will be used instead of the method otherwise used (which defaults to GET). Read the HTTP 1.1 specification for details and explanations. (FTP) Specifies a custom FTP command to use instead of LIST when doing file lists with ftp. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. .IP "-y/--speed-time