curl(1)

NAME
curl - get a file from a FTP, GOPHER, DICT, HTTP or HTTPS server.

SYNOPSIS
curl [options] url

DESCRIPTION
curl is a client to get documents/files from servers, using any of the supported protocols. 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, file transfer resume and more.

OPTIONS

-a  (FTP) When used in a 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.

-A <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.

-b <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 previouslt stored cookie lines from which should be used in this session if they match. Using this method also activates the "cookie awareness" which will make curl record incoming cookies too, which may be handy if you're using this in combination with the -L/--location option.

-B  (FTP) Use ASCII transfer when getting an ftp file. This can also be enforced by using an ftp URL that ends with ";type=A".

-c  Continue/Resume a previous file transfer. This instructs curl to continue appending data on the file where it was previously left, possibly because of a broken connection 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 <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 transfered 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.

-d <data>
    (HTTP) Sends the specified data in a POST request to the HTTP server. Note that the data is sent exactly as specified with no extra processing. The data is expected to be "urlencoded". This will cause curl to pass the data to the server using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Compare to -F.

-e <URL>
    (HTTP) Sends the "Referer Page" information to the HTTP server. Some badly done CGIs fail if it's not set.

-E <certificate[:password]>
    (HTTPS) Tells curl to use the specified certificate file when getting a file with HTTPS. The certificate must be in PEM format. If the optional password isn't specified, it will be queried for on the terminal.

-f  (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.

-F <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 read from a file, prefix the file name with an @ sign. Example, to send your password file to the server, named 'passwd': curl -F passwd=@/etc/passwd www.passwd.com

-h  Usage help.

-H <header>
    (HTTP) Extra header to use when getting a web page. You may specify any number of extra headers.

-i  (HTTP) Include the HTTP-header in the output. The HTTP-header includes things like server-name, date of the document, HTTP-version and more...

-I  (HTTP) Fetch the HTTP-header only! HTTP-servers feature the command HEAD which this uses to get nothing but the header of a document.

-l  (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.

-K <config file>
    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. If the first column of a config line is a '#' character, the rest of the line will be treated as a comment. Specify the filename as '-' to make it read the file from stdin.

-L  (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.

-m <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 properly in win32 systems.

-M  Manual. Display the huge help text.

-n  Makes curl scan the .netrc file in the user's home directory for login name and password. This is typically used for ftp on unix, but if used with http and curl user authentication will be switched on. See netrc(4) 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 .netrc to allow curl to ftp to the machine host.domain.com with user name machine host.domain.com user myself password secret

-o <file>
    Write output to <file> instead of stdout.

-O  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.)

-p <port>
    DEPRECATED FLAG. Use port other than default for current protocol.

-P <address>
    (FTP) Reverses the initiator/listenor 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 specified 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)
     IP address - i.e "192.168.10.1" to specify exact IP number
     host name - i.e "my.host.domain" to specify machine
     "-" - (any single-letter string) to make it pick the machine's default

-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 <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!

-r <range>
    (HTTP) Retrieve a byte range (i.e a partial document) from a HTTP/1.1 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(*)
     500-700,600-799 - specifies 300 bytes from offset 500
     100-199,500-599 - specifies two separate 100 bytes ranges(*) (*) = NOTE that this will cause the server to reply with a multipart response!

-s  Silent mode. Don't show progress meter or error messages. Makes Curl mute.

-t  Transfer the stdin data to the specified file. Curl will read everything from stdin until EOF and store with the supplied name. If this is used on a http(s) server, the PUT command will be used.

-T <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 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.

-u <user:password>
    Specify user and password to use when fetching. See below for detailed examples of how to use this. If no password is specified, curl will ask for it interactively (if that feature isn't disabled when curl is built).

-U <user:password>
    Specify user and password to use for Proxy authentication. If no password is specified, curl will ask for it interactively (if that feature isn't disabled when curl is built).

-v  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.

-x <proxyhost[:port]>
    Use proxy. If the proxyport is not specified, and the -p flag is not used, it is assumed the proxy is at port 1080. If the -p flag is used, then that indicated port number is assumed to be the proxy port number.

-y <speed>
    Speed Limit. 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.

-Y <time>
    Speed 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.

-3  (HTTPS) Forces curl to use SSL version 3 when negotiating with a remote SSL server.

-2  (HTTPS) Forces curl to use SSL version 2 when negotiating with a remote SSL server.

--crlf
    (FTP) Convert LF to CRLF in upload. Useful for MVS (OS/390).

FILES
~/.curlrc
    Default config file.

ENVIRONMENT

HTTP_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
    Sets proxy server to use for HTTP.

HTTPS_PROXY [protocol://]<host>[:port]
    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.

DIAGNOSTICS
There exists a bunch of different error messages that may appear during bad conditions. They're all pretty verbose and descriptive and therefore you won't find any closer description of them here.

BUGS
If you do find any (or have other suggestions), mail Daniel Stenberg <Daniel.Stenberg@sth.frontec.se>.

AUTHORS / CONTRIBUTORS
 Daniel Stenberg <Daniel.Stenberg@sth.frontec.se>
 Rafael Sagula <sagula@inf.ufrgs.br>
 Sampo Kellomaki <sampo@iki.fi>
 Linas Vepstas <linas@linas.org>
 Bjorn Reese <breese@imada.ou.dk>
 Johan Anderson <johan@homemail.com>
 Kjell Ericson <Kjell.Ericson@sth.frontec.se>
 Troy Engel <tengel@sonic.net>
 Ryan Nelson <ryan@inch.com>
 Bjorn Stenberg <Bjorn.Stenberg@sth.frontec.se>
 Angus Mackay <amackay@gus.ml.org>
 Eric Young <eay@cryptsoft.com>
 Simon Dick <simond@totally.irrelevant.org>
 Oren Tirosh <oren@monty.hishome.net>
 Steven G. Johnson <stevenj@alum.mit.edu>
 Gilbert Ramirez Jr. <gram@verdict.uthscsa.edu>
 Vicente Garcia <verot@redestb.es>
 Douglas E. Wegscheid <wegscd@whirlpool.com>
 Mark Butler <butlerm@xmission.com>
 Eric Thelin <eric@generation-i.com>
 Marc Boucher <marc@mbsi.ca>

WWW
http://www.fts.frontec.se/~dast/curl/

FTP
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/www/utilities/curl/

SEE ALSO
ftp(1), wget(1), snarf(1)