How to send HTTP requests using cURL

Reading a URL via GET:
```
curl http://example.com/
```
Defining any HTTP method (like POST or PUT):
```
curl http://example.com/users/1 -XPUT
```
Sending data with a request:
```
curl http://example.com/users -d"first_name=Bruce&last_name=Wayne"
```
If you use -d and do not set an HTTP request method it automatically defaults to POST.

Performing basic authentication:

curl http://user:password@example.com/users/1

All together now:

curl http://user:password@example.com/users/1 -XPUT -d"screen_name=batman"

You can also use Cookies with cURL.
If you are looking for curl-like functionality for an IRB or Rails console, take a look at the rest-client Show archive.org snapshot gem.
If you prefer having a GUI, take a look at the Chrome extension Postman Show archive.org snapshot .
In the Network tab of Chrome Dev tools you can right-click a request and choose Copy / Copy as cURL. This copies an cURL CLI line into your clipboard that corresponds to the request.

Arne Hartherz

Last edit

Over 2 years ago

Henning Koch

Keywords

linux, unix

License

Source code in this card is licensed under the MIT License.

How to make http/https requests yourself with nc/telnet/openssl

Sometimes you want/have to send specific http(s) requests. You can do that easy with curl or just write the request yourself.

nc example.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
# press enter

Here is how to use Chromedriver without libraries like selenium-webdriver. This can be useful for debugging.

The following example visits a web page and reads the a headline's text contents.

When using the screen tool you may be unable to start a screen session but instead encounter an error:

Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/0' - please check.

This is because another user (you) initiated the current terminal -- you probably...

Posted by Arne Hartherz to makandra dev (2011-04-08 07:30)