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15 Tips On How to Use ‘Curl’ Command in

Linux
by Gabriel Cánepa | Published: August 16, 2018 | Last Updated: August 15, 2018
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Back in the mid-1990’s when the Internet was still in its infancy, a Swedish programmer named
Daniel Stenberg started a project that eventually grew into what we know as curl today.
Initially, he aimed at developing a bot that would download currency exchange rates from a web
page periodically and would provide Swedish Kronor equivalents in US dollars to IRC users.
Long story short, the project thrived, adding several protocols and features along the way – and the
rest is history. Now let’s dive in with both feet and learn how to use curl to transfer data and more in
Linux!
We have put together the following list of 15 curl commands for you.

1. View curl Version

The -V or --version options will not only return the version, but also the supported protocols
and features in your current version.
$ curl --version

curl 7.47.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.47.0 GnuTLS/3.4.10 zlib/1.2.8

libidn/1.32 librtmp/2.3
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s
rtmp rtsp smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IDN IPv6 Largefile GSS-API Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM NTLM_WB SSL
libz TLS-SRP UnixSockets

2. Download a File
If you want to download a file, you can use curl with the -O or -o options. The former will save
the file in the current working directory with the same name as in the remote location, whereas the
latter allows you to specify a different filename and/or location.
$ curl -O http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz # Save as yourfile.tar.gz
$ curl -o newfile.tar.gz http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz # Save as
newfile.tar.gz

3. Resume an Interrupted Download

If a download was interrupted for some reason (for example, using Ctrl + c), you can resume it
very easily. The use of -C – (dash C, space dash) tells curl to resume the download beginning where
it left off.
$ curl -C - -O http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz

Download File Using Curl Command

4. Download Multiple Files

With the following command you will download info.html and about.html from
http://yoursite.com and http://mysite.com, respectively, in one go.
$ curl -O http://yoursite.com/info.html -O http://mysite.com/about.html

5. Download URLs From a File

If you combine curl with xargs, you can download files from a list of URLs in a file.
$ xargs -n 1 curl -O < listurls.txt
Download Multiple Files with Curl

6. Use a Proxy with or without Authentication

If you are behind a proxy server listening on port 8080 at proxy.yourdomain.com, do.
$ curl -x proxy.yourdomain.com:8080 -U user:password -O
http://yourdomain.com/yourfile.tar.gz

where you can skip -U user:password if your proxy does not require authentication.

7. Query HTTP Headers

HTTP headers allow the remote web server to send additional information about itself along with
the actual request. This provides the client with details on how the request is being handled.
To query the HTTP headers from a website, do:
$ curl -I www.tecmint.com
Curl Query HTTP Headers
This information is also available in your browser’s developer tools.

8. Make a POST request with Parameters

The following command will send the firstName and lastName parameters, along with their
corresponding values, to https://yourdomain.com/info.php.
$ curl --data "firstName=John&lastName=Doe" https://yourdomain.com/info.php

You can use this tip to simulate the behavior of a regular HTML form.

9. Download Files from an FTP Server with or without Authentication

If a remote FTP server is expecting connections at ftp://yourftpserver, the following command
will download yourfile.tar.gz in the current working directory.
$ curl -u username:password -O ftp://yourftpserver/yourfile.tar.gz

where you can skip -u username:password if the FTP server allows anonymous logins.

10. Upload Files to an FTP server with or without Authentication

To upload a local file named mylocalfile.tar.gz to ftp://yourftpserver using curl, do:
$ curl -u username:password -T mylocalfile.tar.gz ftp://yourftpserver
11. Specify User Agent