What is the cURL command-line syntax to do a POST request?

up vote671down votefavorite 228	How do I make a POST request with cURL command-line tool? http post curl share|improve this question edited Apr 2 '12 at 23:47 Tom Wijsman 37.2k13100179 asked Sep 17 '08 at 15:39 Laurie Young
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up vote663down vote +50

curl --data "param1=value1&param2=value2" http://example.com/resource.cgi or curl --form "fileupload=@filename.txt" http://example.com/resource.cgi For more information see the cURL manual. You might also find the cURL tutorial on emulating a web browser helpful. With libcurl, you'd use the curl_formadd() function to build your form before submitting it in the usual way. See the libcurl documentation for more information. share|improve this answer edited Sep 26 '12 at 11:59 JPS 1276 answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:43 Stephen Deken

@LauriRanta --data-urlencode (no dash), in recent versions at least –  waitinforatrain Feb 12 '13 at 12:34 5   --data '' works if there is no POST data, but the recipient requires a request to be POSTed. – Daniel Beck♦ Apr 27 '13 at 13:15 Also works if you need to update a resource with a PUT: curl -X PUT ... –  Subfuzion Jan 22 at 4:38 add comment

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For a RESTful HTTP POST containing XML: curl -X POST -d @filename http://example.com/path/to/resource --header "Content-Type:text/xml" or for JSON, use this: curl -X POST -d @filename.txt http://example.com/path/to/resource --header "Content-Type:application/json" This will read the contents of file named filename.txt and send it as the post request. share|improve this answer edited Jun 13 '13 at 20:36 Oliver Salzburg♦ 35.5k16101156 answered Mar 10 '11 at 8:29 soundmonster 2,171143

18   If your endpoint is expecting text/xml, append --header "Content-Type:text/xml" to your parameters. –  Naftuli Tzvi Kay Oct 19 '11 at 0:16 1   Could you provide some explanation about what your code does? –  Tom Wijsman Nov 5 '11 at 1:36 10   If you are sending json, you can specify the content type with: --header "Content-Type:application/json" – Juha Palomäki Mar 20 '12 at 16:13  2   @tom-wijsman explanation: curl -X POST implies an HTTP POST request, the -d parameter (long version: --data) tells curl that what follows will be POST parameters, and @filename designates the contents of the file filename as parameter. This approach works best with RESTful HTTP APIs as found at Twitter, Facebook, various other web services including Ruby on Rails as well as HTTP APIs of databases such as CouchDB. REST stands for Representational state transfer –  soundmonster Jun 27 '12 at 11:27 1   How is this more RESTful than other ways though? –  Niklas Berglund Oct 3 '12 at 15:59 show 1 more comment

up vote24down vote	curl -d "name=Rafael%20Sagula&phone=3320780" http://www.where.com/guest.cgi is the example found in the Curl Example Manual. Use %26 for the ampersands though if the above doesn't work: curl -d "name=Rafael%20Sagula%26phone=3320780" http://www.where.com/guest.cgi share|improve this answer edited Jun 15 '12 at 7:17 slhck♦ 71.9k14139195 answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:42 Daok 80911018
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If you want to login to a site, do the following: curl -d "username=admin&password=admin&submit=Login" --dump-header headers http://localhost/Login curl -L -b headers http://localhost/ The first request saves the session cookie (that is provided upon successful login) in the "headers" file. From now on you can use that cookie to authenticate you to any part of the website that you usually access after logging in with a browser. share|improve this answer answered Mar 4 '12 at 2:21 Martin Konecny 61647

a note from curl's man page: 'The -c, --cookie-jar option is however a better way to store cookies.' – maxschlepzig Dec 28 '13 at 15:14 add comment

up vote13down vote	curl -v --data-ascii var=value http://example.com and there are many more options, check curl --help for more information. share|improve this answer edited Nov 5 '11 at 1:36 Tom Wijsman 37.2k13100179 answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:43 Vinko Vrsalovic 1,4161918
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