sign up

Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It's 100% free, no registration required.

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

How can I make a POST request with the cURL command-line tool?
http

curl

edited Mar 20 at 14:54

asked Sep 17 '08 at 15:39

Michael Durrant
364

Laurie Young

17

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jun 6 '10 at 7:46

This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

6 Answers

With fields:
curldata"param1=value1&param2=value2"https://example.com/resource.cgi

Multipart:
curlform"fileupload=@myfile.txt"https://example.com/resource.cgi

Multipart with fields and a filename:

curlform"fileupload=@myfile.txt;filename=desiredfilename.txt"formparam1=value1
formparam2=value2https://example.com/resource.cgi

Without data:
curldata''https://example.com/resource.cgi
curlXPOSThttps://example.com/resource.cgi
curlrequestPOSThttps://example.com/resource.cgi

For more information see the cURL manual. The cURL tutorial on emulating a web browser is
helpful.
With libcurl, use the curl_formadd() function to build your form before submitting it in the
usual way. See the libcurl documentation for more information.
For large files, consider adding parameters to show upload progress:
curltrencodingXPOSTv#ooutputTfilename.dat\
http://example.com/resource.cgi

The ooutput is required, otherwise no progress bar will appear.

edited Jan 16 at 20:47
mlissner
328

answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:43

Stephen Deken

14

2 @LauriRanta dataurlencode (no dash), in recent versions at least waitinforatrain Feb 12 '13 at 12:34
1 Also works if you need to update a resource with a PUT: curl -X PUT ... Subfuzion Jan 22 '14 at 4:38
3 I'm having trouble understanding... when would I do it WithFields, when with Multipart and when
WithoutData? Imray Sep 21 '14 at 11:05
Instead of data you can use d. user35538 Oct 9 at 16:32

log in

tour

help

Sign up

For a RESTful HTTP POST containing XML:

curlXPOSTd@filename.txthttp://example.com/path/to/resourceheader"Content
Type:text/xml"

or for JSON, use this:

curlXPOSTd@filename.txthttp://example.com/path/to/resourceheader"Content
Type:application/json"

This will read the contents of the file named filename.txt and send it as the post request.
edited Nov 4 '14 at 20:08

answered Mar 10 '11 at 8:29

pauldendulk

soundmonster

103

3,481

3 Could you provide some explanation about what your code does? Tom Wijsman Nov 5 '11 at 1:36
6 @tom-wijsman explanation: curlXPOST 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
3 How is this more RESTful than other ways though? Niklas Berglund Oct 3 '12 at 15:59
@NiklasBerglund this should be addressed, there's nothing intrinsically RESTful about this, you simply
have better access to request methods this way. X is request and any HTTP 1.1 method can be
used with it (according to the docs), ie. get,post,put,delete,head,options,trace,connect and
presumably patch - FWIW, RESTful implies the url represents the state being accessed, and the method
(adequately) describes the operation being performed. Slomojo Aug 17 '13 at 14:55

curld"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:
curld"name=Rafael%20Sagula%26phone=3320780"http://www.where.com/guest.cgi

edited Mar 13 '14 at 12:01

answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:42

Community

Daok

989

13

19

Data from stdin: use d@. Example:

echo'{"text":"Hello**world**!"}'|curld@https://api.github.com/markdown

Output:
<p>Hello<strong>world</strong>!</p>

edited May 12 at 11:35

answered Mar 25 '14 at 19:35

Ciro Santilli
732

12

If you want to login to a site, do the following:

curld"username=admin&password=admin&submit=Login"dumpheaderheaders
http://localhost/Login
curlLbheadershttp://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.

answered Mar 4 '12 at 2:21

Martin Konecny
807

2 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

curlvdataasciivar=valuehttp://example.com

and there are many more options, check curlhelp for more information.
edited Nov 5 '11 at 1:36

answered Sep 17 '08 at 15:43

Tom Wijsman
43.4k

17

130

Vinko Vrsalovic
209

1,766

14

18

protected by studiohack May 11 '11 at 16:02

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality answers, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site.
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?