Curl Cheat Sheet

Table of Contents:

CURL GET/HEAD

Prettify json output for curl response 

$ curl -XGET http://${elasticsearch_ip}:9200/_cluster/nodes | python -m json.tool

CURL POST

command description
curl -d “name=username&password=123456” curl send request
curl -H “content-type: application/json” -d “{ "woof": "bark"}” curl sends json

CURL script install rvm 

curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash

CURL Advanced

  • command: curl -L -s http://ipecho.net/plain, curl -L -s http://whatismijnip.nl
    • description: get my public IP
  • command: curl -u $username:$password http://repo.dennyzhang.com/README.txt
    • description: curl with credentials
  • command: curl -v -F key1=value1 -F [email protected]
    • description: curl upload
  • command: curl -k -v –http2 https://www.google.com/
    • description: use http2 curl
  • command: curl -T cryptopp552.zip -u test:test ftp://10.32.99.187/
    • description: curl ftp upload
  • command: curl -u test:test ftp://10.32.99.187/cryptopp552.zip -o cryptopp552.zip
    • description: curl ftp download
  • command: curl -v -u admin:admin123 –upload-file package1.zip http://mysever:8081/dir/package1.zip
    • description: upload with credentials curl

Check website response time 

curl -s -w \
'\nLookup time:\t%{time_namelookup}\nConnect time:\t%{time_connect}\nAppCon time:\t%{time_appconnect}\nRedirect time:\t%{time_redirect}\nPreXfer time:\t%{time_pretransfer }\nStartXfer time:\t%{time_starttransfer}\n\nTotal time:\t%{time_total}\n' \
     -o /dev/null https://www.google.com

Use Curl to check if a remote resource is available 

curl -o /dev/null --silent -Iw "%{http_code}" https://example.com/my.remote.tarball.gz

Downloading file 

curl https://example.com | \
grep --only-matching 'src="[^"]*.[png]"' | \
cut -d \" -f2 | \
while read i; do curl https://example.com/"${i}" \
-o "${i##*/}"; done

Download all PNG files from the site (using GNU grep)

Download the file, save the file without changing its name 

curl --remote-name "https://example.com/linux-distro.iso"

rename file

curl --remote-name "http://example.com/index.html" --output foo.html

continue partial download 

curl --remote-name --continue-at -"https://example.com/linux-distro.iso"

Download files from multiple domains 

curl "https://www.{example,w3,iana}.org/index.html" --output "file_#1.html"

Download a series of files 

curl "https://{foo,bar}.com/file_[1-4].webp" --output "#1_#2.webp"

Download a series of files (output foo_file1.webp, foo_file2.webp...bar_file1_webp, etc.)

Redirect output to file 

$ curl http://url/file > file

Basic Authentication 

$ curl --user username:password http://example.com/
$ curl -u username:password http://example.com/

Write to file instead of stdout 

$ curl -o file http://url/file
$ curl --output file http://url/file

Download header information 

$ curl -I url
# display header information

Write output to a file named remote_file 

$ curl -o file http://url/file
$ curl --output file http://url/file

Execute remote script 

$ curl -s http://url/myscript.sh

Configuration file 

curl -K file
# read configuration from file
curl --config file
$HOME/.curlrc # default configuration file on UNIX-like systems