CURL - Examples of CURL Use From Command Line

Examples of CURL Use From Command Line

Basic use of cURL involves simply typing curl at the command line, followed by the URL of the output to retrieve.

To retrieve the example.com homepage, type:

cURL defaults to displaying the output it retrieves to the standard output specified on the system (usually the terminal window). So running the command above would, on most systems, display the www.example.com source-code in the terminal window.

cURL can write the output it retrieves to a file with the -o flag, thus:

This will store the source code for www.example.com into a file named example.html. While retrieving output, cURL will display a progress-bar showing how much of the output has downloaded. Note however that cURL does not show a progress bar when preparing to display the output in the terminal window, since a progress-bar is likely to interfere with the display of the output.

To download output to a file that has the same name as on the system it originates from, use the -O flag, for example:

If the server responds that the file (example.html) is moved to a different location (indicated with a Location: header and a 3XX response code), use the -L flag, for example:

Curl offers a busload of useful tricks like proxy support, user authentication, FTP upload, HTTP post, SSL connections, cookies, file transfer resume, Metalink, and more.