cURL is tool that can be used to easily transfer data between servers. It supports a variety of protocols including HTTP, FTP, TELNET and many more. We will show several examples of cURL that can be used through a terminal. In this article about the top 5 cURL examples for beginners, you can learn how to – view the HTTP response of a website, download a file, transfer a file, post data to a server or api or view the headers of a response.
Using cURL to view the HTTP response of a website
This will output the response of the web server hosting the domain to your console
curl domain.com
Sometimes this will provide an output informing you that the resource has been moved to a different address, you can follow the redirect using -L
curl -L domain.com
If you’re making a request to a resource that has HTTP Authentication turned on you can Authenticate using
curl -u user:password domain.com
Downloading a file using cURL
This will download a file. The difference is when to use -o or -O with lower or capital letter. Lowercase will save a file of your choice whether -O will save the file as it was called on the server.
curl -o myFile.zip http://www.domain.com/downloads/file.zip curl -O http://www.domain.com/downloads/file.zip
You can also transfer files through FTP using cURL
This will work the same way as transferring a file through an FTP client like FileZilla
curl -u ftpUser:password -T fileToDownloadViaFtp.tar.gz ftp://hostname.ftpserver.com
Using cURL to POST Data to a Server or API
Although not very handy you can use cURL to make API calls
curl -d '{"JSONKey":"JSONValue"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:3000/data
Using cURL to view the Headers of a Response
curl -L domain.com curl --head domain.com
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