cURL Cheat Sheet

curl https://example.com

# Fetch a resource with the default GET method.

curl -L https://example.com

# Follow HTTP 3xx redirects automatically.

curl -O https://example.com/file.tar.gz

# Download and save using the server-provided path basename.

curl -o response.html https://example.com

# Write the response body to a local file.

curl -i https://example.com

# Print response headers with the response body.

curl -I https://example.com

# Send a HEAD request to inspect headers without downloading the body.

curl -sS https://example.com

# Suppress progress meter but still show errors.

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'status=%{http_code} time=%{time_total}
' https://example.com

# Print status code and timing data after the transfer.

curl --fail -sS https://api.example.com/data

# Exit non-zero on HTTP 400/500 responses.

curl --globoff 'https://example.com/items[1]'

# Turn off curl URL glob expansion for literal brackets or braces.

curl -X POST https://example.com/resource

# Send a POST request with an empty body.

curl -X DELETE https://example.com/resource/123

# Send a method such as PUT, PATCH, DELETE, or PURGE.

curl 'https://example.com/search?q=curl&sort=new'

# Pass query parameters directly in the URL.

curl --get --data-urlencode 'q=curl examples' https://example.com/search

# Build a GET query string from data parameters.

curl -H 'Accept: application/json' https://api.example.com/items

# Add a custom request header.

curl -A 'Mozilla/5.0 test-client' https://example.com

# Override the default curl User-Agent.

curl -e 'https://example.com/from' https://example.com/to

# Send a custom Referer header.

curl -b 'session=abc123; theme=dark' https://example.com

# Supply a Cookie header value from the command line.

curl -c cookies.txt https://example.com/login

# Write cookies set by the server into a cookie jar file.

curl -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt https://example.com/profile

# Load cookies from a file and save updated cookies back.

curl -F 'name=jon' https://example.com/form

# Send a simple form field using multipart/form-data.

curl -F 'file=@./report.pdf' https://example.com/upload

# Attach a file as a multipart upload.

curl -F 'file=@./image.png;type=image/png' https://example.com/upload

# Specify the filename part and content type.

curl -T ./artifact.zip https://example.com/artifact.zip

# Send a local file as the request body with PUT.

curl --data-raw '{"ok":true}' https://api.example.com/items

# POST a raw string body exactly as provided.

curl --data-binary @payload.bin https://api.example.com/upload

# Send binary-safe request data without transformations.

curl --data-urlencode 'message=hello world & more' https://example.com/submit

# Encode form or query values safely.

curl -C - -O https://example.com/large.iso

# Continue downloading from where a file left off.

curl -r 0-1023 https://example.com/bigfile.bin -o first-kb.bin

# Download only a specific byte range from a resource.

curl --parallel --parallel-max 4 -O https://example.com/a.iso -O https://example.com/b.iso

# Download multiple URLs in parallel.