Curl is a command-line tool used for transferring data from or to a server using various protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, LDAP, etc. It is available on Unix-based systems, including Linux and macOS, as well as on Windows systems.
Curl is commonly used for the following tasks:
Downloading files: Curl can be used to download files from a server using various protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and FTPS.
Uploading files: Curl can also be used to upload files to a server using various protocols, including FTP, FTPS, SCP, and SFTP.
Testing APIs: Curl can be used to test APIs by sending requests and receiving responses.
Debugging: Curl can be used to debug network applications by sending and receiving data packets to and from a server.
Automating tasks: Curl can be used to automate tasks by scripting various operations such as file download/upload and API testing.
Curl is a powerful tool, and its versatility and simplicity make it a popular choice among developers, system administrators, and other technical professionals. It is an open-source tool and is available under the MIT license.
Overall, Curl is a great tool for transferring data over various protocols and can be used in a variety of situations where data transfer is required.
here are explanations and examples of each of the Curl commands:
- Download a file:
$ curl -O <url>
This command downloads the file from the specified URL and saves it with the same name as the file on the server.
Example: curl -O https://example.com/file.txt
- Download a file and rename it:
$ curl -o <filename> <url>
This command downloads the file from the specified URL and saves it with the specified filename.
Example: curl -o myfile.txt https://example.com/file.txt
- Resume a partial download:
$ curl -C - -O <url>
This command resumes a partial download by appending the new data to the existing file.
Example: curl -C - -O https://example.com/file.txt
- Send a request to a server:
$ curl <url>
This command sends a GET request to the specified URL and displays the response from the server.
Example: curl https://example.com
- Send data to a server:
$ curl -d '<data>' <url>
This command sends a POST request to the specified URL with the specified data.
Example: curl -d 'username=user&password=pass' https://example.com/login
- Send data in JSON format:
$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '<data>' <url>
This command sends a POST request to the specified URL with the specified data in JSON format.
Example: curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username":"user", "password":"pass"}' https://example.com/login
- Set a custom HTTP header:
$ curl -H "<header>: <value>" <url>
This command sends a request to the specified URL with a custom HTTP header.
Example: curl -H "Authorization: Bearer token" https://example.com/api
- Follow redirects:
$ curl -L <url>
This command follows HTTP redirects and displays the final response.
Example: curl -L https://example.com
- Set user agent:
$ curl -A "<user-agent>" <url>
This command sends a request to the specified URL with the specified user agent.
Example: curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.3" https://example.com
- Use a specific HTTP method:
$ curl -X <method> <url>
This command sends a request to the specified URL using the specified HTTP method, such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.
Example: curl -X DELETE https://example.com/delete