curl - get a URL with FTP, TELNET, LDAP, GOPHER, DICT,
FILE, HTTP or HTTPS syntax.
SYNOPSIS
curl [options] [URL...]
DESCRIPTION
curl is a client to get documents/files from or send docu
ments to a server, using any of the supported protocols
(HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, GOPHER, DICT, TELNET, LDAP or FILE).
The command is designed to work without user interaction
or any kind of interactivity.
curl offers a busload of useful tricks like proxy support,
user authentication, ftp upload, HTTP post, SSL (https:)
connections, cookies, file transfer resume and more.
URL
The URL syntax is protocol dependent. You'll find a
detailed description in RFC 2396.
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 lead
ing zeros)
ftp://ftp.letters.com/file[a-z].txt
It is possible to specify up to 9 sets or series for a
URL, but no nesting is supported at the moment:
http://www.any.org/archive[1996-1999]/vol
ume[1-4]part{a,b,c,index}.html
You can specify any amount of URLs on the command line.
They will be fetched in a sequential manner in the speci
fied order.
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.
OPTIONS
(FTP) When used in a ftp upload, this will tell
curl to append to the target file instead of over
writing it. If the file doesn't exist, it will be
created.
If this option is used twice, the second one will
disable append mode again.
-A/--user-agent <agent string>
(HTTP) Specify the User-Agent string to send to the
HTTP server. Some badly done CGIs fail if its not
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 -H/--header
flag of course.
If this option is set more than once, the last one
will be the one that's used.
-b/--cookie <name=data>
(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 acti
vates the "cookie parser" which will make curl
record incoming cookies too, which may be handy if
you're using this in combination with the
-L/--location option. The file format of the file
to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers
or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format.
NOTE that the file specified with -b/--cookie is
only used as input. No cookies will be stored in
the file. To store cookies, save the HTTP headers
to a file using -D/--dump-header!
If this option is set more than once, the last one
will be the one that's used.
-B/--use-ascii
Use ASCII transfer when getting an FTP file or LDAP
info. 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.
If this option is used twice, the second one will
--connect-timeout <seconds>
Maximum time in seconds that you allow the connec
tion to the server to take. This only limits the
connection phase, once curl has connected this
option is of no more use. This option didn't work
in win32 systems until 7.7.2. See also the --max-
time option.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-c/--continue
Deprecated. Use '-C -' instead. Continue/Resume a
previous file transfer. This instructs curl to con
tinue appending data on the file where it was pre
viously left, possibly because of a broken connec
tion to the server. There must be a named physical
file to append to for this to work. Note: Upload
resume is depening on a command named SIZE not
always present in all ftp servers! Upload resume is
for FTP only. HTTP resume is only possible with
HTTP/1.1 or later servers.
-C/--continue-at <offset>
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 trans
fered to the destination. If used with uploads,
the ftp server command SIZE will not be used by
curl. Upload resume is for FTP only. HTTP resume
is only possible with HTTP/1.1 or later servers.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-d/--data <data>
(HTTP) Sends the specified data in a POST request
to the HTTP server, in a way that can emulate as if
a user has filled in a HTML form and pressed the
submit button. Note that the data is sent exactly
as specified with no extra processing (with all
newlines cut off). The data is expected to be
"url-encoded". This will cause curl to pass the
data to the server using the content-type applica
tion/x-www-form-urlencoded. Compare to -F. If more
than one -d/--data option is used on the same com
mand 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'.
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.
To post data purely binary, you should instead use
the --data-binary option.
-d/--data is the same as --data-ascii.
If this option is used several times, the ones fol
lowing the first will append data.
--data-ascii <data>
(HTTP) This is an alias for the -d/--data option.
If this option is used several times, the ones fol
lowing the first will append data.
--data-binary <data>
(HTTP) This posts data in a similar manner as
--data-ascii does, although when using this option
the entire context of the posted data is kept as-
is. If you want to post a binary file without the
strip-newlines feature of the --data-ascii option,
this is for you.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
If this option is used several times, the ones fol
lowing the first will append data.
-D/--dump-header <file>
(HTTP/FTP) Write the HTTP headers to this file.
Write the FTP file info to this file if -I/--head
is used.
This option is handy to use when you want to store
the cookies that a HTTP site sends to you. The
cookies could then be read in a second curl invoke
by using the -b/--cookie option!
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-e/--referer <URL>
(HTTP) Sends the "Referer Page" information to the
HTTP server. This can also be set with the
-H/--header flag of course. When used with
-L/--location you can append ";auto" to the referer
URL to make curl automatically set the previous URL
when it follows a Location: header. The ";auto"
initial referer.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
--egd-file <file>
(HTTPS) Specify the path name to the Entropy Gath
ering Daemon socket. The socket is used to seed the
random engine for SSL connections. See also the
--random-file option.
-E/--cert <certificate[:password]>
(HTTPS) Tells curl to use the specified certificate
file when getting a file with HTTPS. The certifi
cate must be in PEM format. If the optional pass
word isn't specified, it will be queried for on the
terminal. Note that this certificate is the private
key and the private certificate concatenated!
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
--cacert <CA certificate>
(HTTPS) Tells curl to use the specified certificate
file to verify the peer. The certificate must be in
PEM format.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-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 a HTML document
stating so (which often also describes why and
more). This flag will prevent curl from outputting
that and fail silently instead.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable silent failure.
-F/--form <name=content>
(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 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 @
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:
curl -F password=@/etc/passwd www.mypasswords.com
To read the file's content from stdin insted of a
file, use - where the file name should've been.
This goes for both @ and < constructs.
This option can be used multiple times.
-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. (Option
added in curl 7.6)
-h/--help
Usage help.
-H/--header <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.
Replacing an internal header with one without con
tent on the right side of the colon will prevent
that header from appearing.
This option can be used multiple times.
-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...
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable header include.
--interface <name>
Perform an operation using a specified interface.
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.
-I/--head
(HTTP/FTP) 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 file, curl displays the file size only.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable header only.
--krb4 <level>
(FTP) Enable kerberos4 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.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-K/--config <config file>
Specify which config file to read curl arguments
from. The config file is a text file in which com
mand line arguments can be written which then will
be used as if they were written on the actual com
mand line. Options and their parameters must be
specified on the same config file line. If the
parameter is to contain white spaces, the parameter
must be inclosed within quotes. If the first col
umn of a config line is a '#' character, the rest
of the line will be treated as a comment.
Specify the filename as '-' to make curl read the
file from stdin.
This option can be used multiple times.
-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 direc
tory since the normal directory view doesn't use a
standard look or format.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable list only.
(HTTP/HTTPS) If the server reports that the
requested page has a different location (indicated
with the header line Location:) this flag will let
curl attempt to reattempt the get on the new place.
If used together with -i or -I, headers from all
requested pages will be shown. If this flag is used
when making a HTTP POST, curl will automatically
switch to GET after the initial POST has been done.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable location following.
-m/--max-time <seconds>
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. This doesn't work
fully in win32 systems. See also the --connect-
timeout option.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-M/--manual
Manual. Display the huge help text.
-n/--netrc
Makes curl scan the .netrc file in the user's home
directory for login name and password. This is typ
ically used for ftp on unix. If used with http,
curl will enable user authentication. See netrc(4)
for details on the file format. Curl will not com
plain if that file hasn't the right permissions (it
should not be world nor group readable). The envi
ronment variable "HOME" is used to find the home
directory.
A quick and very simple example of how to setup a
.netrc to allow curl to ftp to the machine
host.domain.com with user name 'myself' and pass
word 'secret' should look similar to:
machine host.domain.com login myself password
secret
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable netrc usage.
-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
this option will disable that buffering.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
switch on buffering.
-o/--output <file>
Write output to <file> instead of stdout. If you
are using {} or [] to fetch multiple documents, you
can use '#' followed by a number in the <file>
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.
-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.)
You may use this option as many times as you have
number of URLs.
-p/--proxytunnel
When an HTTP proxy is used, 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 num
ber curl wants to tunnel through to.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable proxy tunnel.
-P/--ftpport <address>
(FTP) Reverses the initiator/listener roles when
connecting with ftp. This switch makes Curl use the
PORT command instead of PASV. In practice, PORT
tells the server to connect to the client's speci
fied address and port, while PASV asks the server
for an ip address and port to connect to. <address>
should be one of:
interface i.e "eth0" to specify which interface's
IP address you want to use (Unix only)
number
host name i.e "my.host.domain" to specify machine
- (any single-letter string) to make it
pick the machine's default
If this option is used several times, the last one will be
used.
-q If used as the first parameter on the command line,
the $HOME/.curlrc file will not be read and used as
a config file.
-Q/--quote <comand>
(FTP) Send an arbitrary command to the remote FTP
server, by using the QUOTE command of the server.
Not all servers support this command, and the set
of QUOTE commands are server specific! Quote com
mands are sent BEFORE the transfer is taking place.
To make commands take place after a successful
transfer, prefix them with a dash '-'. You may
specify any amount of commands to be run before and
after the transfer. If the server returns failure
for one of the commands, the entire operation will
be aborted.
This option can be used multiple times.
--random-file <file>
(HTTPS) 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 --edg-file option.
-r/--range <range>
(HTTP/FTP) Retrieve a byte range (i.e a partial
document) from a HTTP/1.1 or FTP server. Ranges can
be specified in a number of ways.
0-499 specifies the first 500 bytes
500-999 specifies the second 500 bytes
-500 specifies the last 500 bytes
9500 specifies the bytes from offset 9500 and
forward
0-0,-1 specifies the first and last byte
only(*)(H)
specifies 300 bytes from offset 500(H)
100-199,500-599
specifies two separate 100 bytes
ranges(*)(H)
(*) = NOTE that this will cause the server to reply with a
multipart response!
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.
-s/--silent
Silent mode. Don't show progress meter or error
messages. Makes Curl mute.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable mute.
-S/--show-error
When used with -s it makes curl show error message
if it fails.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable show error.
-t/--telnet-option <OPT=val>
Pass options to the telnet protocol. Supported
options are:
TTYPE=<term> Sets the terminal type.
XDISPLOC=<X display> Sets the X display location.
NEW_ENV=<var,val> Sets an environment variable.
-T/--upload-file <file>
Like -t, but this transfers the specified local
file. 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 direc
tory 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
be used.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-u/--user <user:password>
Specify user and password to use when fetching. See
README.curl for detailed examples of how to use
this. If no password is specified, curl will ask
for it interactively.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-U/--proxy-user <user:password>
Specify user and password to use for Proxy authen
tication. If no password is specified, curl will
ask for it interactively.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
--url <URL>
Specify a URL to fetch. This option is mostly handy
when you wanna 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 -o or
the -O options.
-v/--verbose
Makes the fetching more verbose/talkative. Mostly
usable for debugging. Lines starting with '>' means
data sent by curl, '<' means data received by curl
that is hidden in normal cases and lines starting
with '*' means additional info provided by curl.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable verbose.
-V/--version
Displays the full version of curl, libcurl and
other 3rd party libraries linked with the exe
cutable.
-w/--write-out <format>
Defines what to display after a completed and suc
cessful operation. The format is a string that may
contain plain text mixed with any number of vari
ables. 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 "@-".
substituted by the value or text that curl thinks
fit, as described below. All variables are speci
fied like %{variable_name} and to output a normal %
you just write them like %%. You can output a new
line by using \n, a carrige return with \r and a
tab space with \t.
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:
url_effective The URL that was fetched last. This
is mostly meaningful if you've told
curl to follow location: headers.
http_code The numerical code that was found in
the last retrieved HTTP(S) page.
time_total The total time, in seconds, that the
full operation lasted. The time will
be displayed with millisecond reso
lution.
time_namelookup
The time, in seconds, it took from
the start until the name resolving
was completed.
time_connect The time, in seconds, it took from
the start until the connect to the
remote host (or proxy) was com
pleted.
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 nego
tiations that are specific to the
particular protocol(s) involved.
size_download The total amount of bytes that were
downloaded.
size_upload The total amount of bytes that were
uploaded.
size_header The total amount of bytes of the
downloaded headers.
size_request The total amount of bytes that were
speed_download The average download speed that curl
measured for the complete download.
speed_upload The average upload speed that curl
measured for the complete upload.
If this option is used several times, the last one will be
used.
-x/--proxy <proxyhost[:port]>
Use specified proxy. If the port number is not
specified, it is assumed at port 1080.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-X/--request <command>
(HTTP) Specifies a custom request to use when com
municating with the HTTP server. The specified
request will be used instead of the standard 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.
-y/--speed-time <time>
If a download is slower than speed-limit bytes per
second during a speed-time period, the download
gets aborted. If speed-time is used, the default
speed-limit will be 1 unless set with -y.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-Y/--speed-limit <speed>
If a download is slower than this given speed, in
bytes per second, for speed-time seconds it gets
aborted. speed-time is set with -Y and is 30 if not
set.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-z/--time-cond <date expression>
(HTTP) Request to get a file that has been modified
later than the given time and date, or one that has
been modified before that time. The date expression
can be all sorts of date strings or if it doesn't
from a given file name instead! See the GNU date(1)
or curl_getdate(3) man pages for date expression
details.
Start the date expression with a dash (-) to make
it request for a document that is older than the
given date/time, default is a document that is
newer than the specified date/time.
If this option is used several times, the last one
will be used.
-3/--sslv3
(HTTPS) Forces curl to use SSL version 3 when nego
tiating with a remote SSL server.
-2/--sslv2
(HTTPS) Forces curl to use SSL version 2 when nego
tiating with a remote SSL server.
-#/--progress-bar
Make curl display progress information as a
progress bar instead of the default statistics.
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable the progress bar.
--crlf (FTP) Convert LF to CRLF in upload. Useful for MVS
(OS/390).
If this option is used twice, the second will again
disable crlf converting.
--stderr <file>
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.
FILES
~/.curlrc
Default config file.
ENVIRONMENT
HTTP_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
Sets proxy server to use for HTTP.
Sets proxy server to use for HTTPS.
FTP_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
Sets proxy server to use for FTP.
GOPHER_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
Sets proxy server to use for GOPHER.
ALL_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
Sets proxy server to use if no protocol-specific
proxy is set.
NO_PROXY <comma-separated list of hosts>
list of host names that shouldn't go through any
proxy. If set to a asterisk '*' only, it matches
all hosts.
COLUMNS <integer>
The width of the terminal. This variable only
affects curl when the --progress-bar option is
used.
EXIT CODES
There exists a bunch of different error codes and their
corresponding error messages that may appear during bad
conditions. At the time of this writing, the exit codes
are:
1 Unsupported protocol. This build of curl has no
support for this protocol.
2 Failed to initialize.
3 URL malformat. The syntax was not correct.
4 URL user malformatted. The user-part of the URL
syntax was not correct.
5 Couldn't resolve proxy. The given proxy host could
not be resolved.
6 Couldn't resolve host. The given remote host was
not resolved.
7 Failed to connect to host.
8 FTP weird server reply. The server sent data curl
couldn't parse.
9 FTP access denied. The server denied login.
10 FTP user/password incorrect. Either one or both
were not accepted by the server.
sent to the PASS request.
12 FTP weird USER reply. Curl couldn't parse the reply
sent to the USER request.
13 FTP weird PASV reply, Curl couldn't parse the reply
sent to the PASV request.
14 FTP weird 227 format. Curl couldn't parse the
227-line the server sent.
15 FTP can't get host. Couldn't resolve the host IP we
got in the 227-line.
16 FTP can't reconnect. Couldn't connect to the host
we got in the 227-line.
17 FTP couldn't set binary. Couldn't change transfer
method to binary.
18 Partial file. Only a part of the file was trans
fered.
19 FTP couldn't RETR file. The RETR command failed.
20 FTP write error. The transfer was reported bad by
the server.
21 FTP quote error. A quote command returned error
from the server.
22 HTTP not found. The requested page was not found.
This return code only appears if --fail is used.
23 Write error. Curl couldn't write data to a local
filesystem or similar.
24 Malformat user. User name badly specified.
25 FTP couldn't STOR file. The server denied the STOR
operation.
26 Read error. Various reading problems.
27 Out of memory. A memory allocation request failed.
28 Operation timeout. The specified time-out period
was reached according to the conditions.
29 FTP couldn't set ASCII. The server returned an
unknown reply.
30 FTP PORT failed. The PORT command failed.
32 FTP couldn't use SIZE. The SIZE command failed. The
command is an extension to the original FTP spec
RFC 959.
33 HTTP range error. The range "command" didn't work.
34 HTTP post error. Internal post-request generation
error.
35 SSL connect error. The SSL handshaking failed.
36 FTP bad download resume. Couldn't continue an ear
lier aborted download.
37 FILE couldn't read file. Failed to open the file.
Permissions?
38 LDAP cannot bind. LDAP bind operation failed.
39 LDAP search failed.
40 Library not found. The LDAP library was not found.
41 Function not found. A required LDAP function was
not found.
42 Aborted by callback. An application told curl to
abort the operation.
43 Internal error. A function was called with a bad
parameter.
44 Internal error. A function was called in a bad
order.
45 Interface error. A specified outgoing interface
could not be used.
46 Bad password entered. An error was signalled when
the password was entered.
47 Too many redirects. When following redirects, curl
hit the maximum amount.
48 Unknown TELNET option specified.
49 Malformed telnet option.
XX There will appear more error codes here in future
releases. The existing ones are meant to never
change.
If you do find bugs, mail them to curl-bug@haxx.se.
AUTHORS / CONTRIBUTORS
Daniel Stenberg is the main author, but the whole list of
contributors is found in the separate THANKS file.
WWW
http://curl.haxx.se
FTP
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/www/utilities/curl/
SEE ALSO
ftp(1), wget(1), snarf(1)
Man(1) output converted with
man2html