curl(1)

NAME
curl - transfer a URL

SYNOPSIS
curl [options / URLs]

DESCRIPTION
**curl** is a tool for transferring data from or to a server. It supports these protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS. 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 *libcurl(3)* for details.

URL
The URL syntax is protocol-dependent. You find a detailed description in RFC 3986. You can specify multiple URLs or parts of URLs by writing part sets within braces and quoting the URL as in:
  "http://site.{one,two,three}.com" or you can get sequences of alphanumeric series by using [] as in:
  "ftp://ftp.example.com/file[1-100].txt"
  "ftp://ftp.example.com/file[001-100].txt" (with leading zeros)
  "ftp://ftp.example.com/file[a-z].txt" Nested sequences are not supported, but you can use several ones next to each other:
  "http://example.com/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. You can specify command line options and URLs mixed and in any order on the command line. You can specify a step counter for the ranges to get every Nth number or letter:
  "http://example.com/file[1-100:10].txt"
  "http://example.com/file[a-z:2].txt" When using [] or {} sequences when invoked from a command line prompt, you probably have to put the full URL within double quotes to avoid the shell from interfering with it. This also goes for other characters treated special, like for example '&', '?' and '*'. Provide the IPv6 zone index in the URL with an escaped percentage sign and the interface name. Like in
  "http://[fe80::3%25eth0]/" 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 do its best to use what you pass to it as a URL. It is not trying to validate it as a syntactically correct URL by any means but is fairly liberal with what it accepts. 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 invocations.

OUTPUT
If not told otherwise, curl writes the received data to stdout. It can be instructed to instead save that data into a local file, using the --output or --remote-name options. If curl is given multiple URLs to transfer on the command line, it similarly needs multiple options for where to save them. curl does not parse or otherwise "understand" the content it gets or writes as output. It does no encoding or decoding, unless explicitly asked to with dedicated command line options.

PROTOCOLS
curl supports numerous protocols, or put in URL terms: schemes. Your particular build may not support them all.

DICT
    Lets you lookup words using online dictionaries.

FILE
    Read or write local files. curl does not support accessing file:// URL remotely, but when running on Microsoft Windows using the native UNC approach will work.

FTP(S)
    curl supports the File Transfer Protocol with a lot of tweaks and levers. With or without using TLS.

GOPHER(S)
    Retrieve files.

HTTP(S)
    curl supports HTTP with numerous options and variations. It can speak HTTP version 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 2 and 3 depending on build options and the correct command line options.

IMAP(S)
    Using the mail reading protocol, curl can "download" emails for you. With or without using TLS.

LDAP(S)
    curl can do directory lookups for you, with or without TLS.

MQTT
    curl supports MQTT version 3. Downloading over MQTT equals "subscribe" to a topic while uploading/posting equals "publish" on a topic. MQTT over TLS is not supported (yet).

POP3(S)
    Downloading from a pop3 server means getting a mail. With or without using TLS.

RTMP(S)
    The Realtime Messaging Protocol is primarily used to server streaming media and curl can download it.

RTSP
    curl supports RTSP 1.0 downloads.

SCP curl supports SSH version 2 scp transfers.

SFTP
    curl supports SFTP (draft 5) done over SSH version 2.

SMB(S)
    curl supports SMB version 1 for upload and download.

SMTP(S)
    Uploading contents to an SMTP server means sending an email. With or without TLS.

TELNET
    Telling curl to fetch a telnet URL starts an interactive session where it sends what it reads on stdin and outputs what the server sends it.

TFTP
    curl can do TFTP downloads and uploads.

PROGRESS METER
curl normally displays a progress meter during operations, indicating the amount of transferred data, transfer speeds and estimated time left, etc. The progress meter displays the transfer rate in bytes per second. The suffixes (k, M, G, T, P) are 1024 based. For example 1k is 1024 bytes. 1M is 1048576 bytes. curl displays this data to the terminal by default, so if you invoke curl to do an operation and it is about to write data to the terminal, it *disables* 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 (>), --output or similar. This does not apply to FTP upload as that operation does not spit out any response data to the terminal. If you prefer a progress "bar" instead of the regular meter, --progress-bar is your friend. You can also disable the progress meter completely with the --silent option.

OPTIONS
Options start with one or two dashes. Many of the options require an additional value next to them. The short "single-dash" form of the options, -d for example, may be used with or without a space between it and its value, although a space is a recommended separator. The long "double-dash" form, --data for example, requires a space between it and its value. Short version options that do not need any additional values can be used immediately next to each other, like for example you can specify all the options -O, -L and -v at once as -OLv. In general, all boolean options are enabled with --**option** and yet again disabled with --**no-**option. That is, you use the same option name but prefix it with "no-". However, in this list we mostly only list and show the --option version of them.