FAQ (67885B)
1 _ _ ____ _ 2 ___| | | | _ \| | 3 / __| | | | |_) | | 4 | (__| |_| | _ <| |___ 5 \___|\___/|_| \_\_____| 6 7 FAQ 8 9 1. Philosophy 10 1.1 What is cURL? 11 1.2 What is libcurl? 12 1.3 What is curl not? 13 1.4 When will you make curl do XXXX ? 14 1.5 Who makes curl? 15 1.6 What do you get for making curl? 16 1.7 What about CURL from curl.com? 17 1.8 I have a problem, who do I mail? 18 1.9 Where do I buy commercial support for curl? 19 1.10 How many are using curl? 20 1.11 Why do you not update ca-bundle.crt 21 1.12 I have a problem, who can I chat with? 22 1.13 curl's ECCN number? 23 1.14 How do I submit my patch? 24 1.15 How do I port libcurl to my OS? 25 26 2. Install Related Problems 27 2.1 configure fails when using static libraries 28 2.2 Does curl work/build with other SSL libraries? 29 2.3 How do I upgrade curl.exe in Windows? 30 2.4 Does curl support SOCKS (RFC 1928) ? 31 32 3. Usage Problems 33 3.1 curl: (1) SSL is disabled, https: not supported 34 3.2 How do I tell curl to resume a transfer? 35 3.3 Why does my posting using -F not work? 36 3.4 How do I tell curl to run custom FTP commands? 37 3.5 How can I disable the Accept: */* header? 38 3.6 Does curl support ASP, XML, XHTML or HTML version Y? 39 3.7 Can I use curl to delete/rename a file through FTP? 40 3.8 How do I tell curl to follow HTTP redirects? 41 3.9 How do I use curl in my favorite programming language? 42 3.10 What about SOAP, WebDAV, XML-RPC or similar protocols over HTTP? 43 3.11 How do I POST with a different Content-Type? 44 3.12 Why do FTP-specific features over HTTP proxy fail? 45 3.13 Why do my single/double quotes fail? 46 3.14 Does curl support JavaScript or PAC (automated proxy config)? 47 3.15 Can I do recursive fetches with curl? 48 3.16 What certificates do I need when I use SSL? 49 3.17 How do I list the root directory of an FTP server? 50 3.18 Can I use curl to send a POST/PUT and not wait for a response? 51 3.19 How do I get HTTP from a host using a specific IP address? 52 3.20 How to SFTP from my user's home directory? 53 3.21 Protocol xxx not supported or disabled in libcurl 54 3.22 curl -X gives me HTTP problems 55 56 4. Running Problems 57 4.2 Why do I get problems when I use & or % in the URL? 58 4.3 How can I use {, }, [ or ] to specify multiple URLs? 59 4.4 Why do I get downloaded data even though the webpage does not exist? 60 4.5 Why do I get return code XXX from an HTTP server? 61 4.5.1 "400 Bad Request" 62 4.5.2 "401 Unauthorized" 63 4.5.3 "403 Forbidden" 64 4.5.4 "404 Not Found" 65 4.5.5 "405 Method Not Allowed" 66 4.5.6 "301 Moved Permanently" 67 4.6 Can you tell me what error code 142 means? 68 4.7 How do I keep usernames and passwords secret in curl command lines? 69 4.8 I found a bug 70 4.9 curl cannot authenticate to a server that requires NTLM? 71 4.10 My HTTP request using HEAD, PUT or DELETE does not work 72 4.11 Why do my HTTP range requests return the full document? 73 4.12 Why do I get "certificate verify failed" ? 74 4.13 Why is curl -R on Windows one hour off? 75 4.14 Redirects work in browser but not with curl 76 4.15 FTPS does not work 77 4.16 My HTTP POST or PUT requests are slow 78 4.17 Non-functional connect timeouts on Windows 79 4.18 file:// URLs containing drive letters (Windows, NetWare) 80 4.19 Why does not curl return an error when the network cable is unplugged? 81 4.20 curl does not return error for HTTP non-200 responses 82 83 5. libcurl Issues 84 5.1 Is libcurl thread-safe? 85 5.2 How can I receive all data into a large memory chunk? 86 5.3 How do I fetch multiple files with libcurl? 87 5.4 Does libcurl do Winsock initialization on Win32 systems? 88 5.5 Does CURLOPT_WRITEDATA and CURLOPT_READDATA work on Win32 ? 89 5.6 What about Keep-Alive or persistent connections? 90 5.7 Link errors when building libcurl on Windows 91 5.8 libcurl.so.X: open failed: No such file or directory 92 5.9 How does libcurl resolve hostnames? 93 5.10 How do I prevent libcurl from writing the response to stdout? 94 5.11 How do I make libcurl not receive the whole HTTP response? 95 5.12 Can I make libcurl fake or hide my real IP address? 96 5.13 How do I stop an ongoing transfer? 97 5.14 Using C++ non-static functions for callbacks? 98 5.15 How do I get an FTP directory listing? 99 5.16 I want a different time-out 100 5.17 Can I write a server with libcurl? 101 5.18 Does libcurl use threads? 102 103 6. License Issues 104 6.1 I have a GPL program, can I use the libcurl library? 105 6.2 I have a closed-source program, can I use the libcurl library? 106 6.3 I have a BSD licensed program, can I use the libcurl library? 107 6.4 I have a program that uses LGPL libraries, can I use libcurl? 108 6.5 Can I modify curl/libcurl for my program and keep the changes secret? 109 6.6 Can you please change the curl/libcurl license to XXXX? 110 6.7 What are my obligations when using libcurl in my commercial apps? 111 112 7. PHP/CURL Issues 113 7.1 What is PHP/CURL? 114 7.2 Who wrote PHP/CURL? 115 7.3 Can I perform multiple requests using the same handle? 116 7.4 Does PHP/CURL have dependencies? 117 118 8. Development 119 8.1 Why does curl use C89? 120 8.2 Will curl be rewritten? 121 122 ============================================================================== 123 124 1. Philosophy 125 126 1.1 What is cURL? 127 128 cURL is the name of the project. The name is a play on 'Client for URLs', 129 originally with URL spelled in uppercase to make it obvious it deals with 130 URLs. The fact it can also be read as 'see URL' also helped, it works as 131 an abbreviation for "Client URL Request Library" or why not the recursive 132 version: "curl URL Request Library". 133 134 The cURL project produces two products: 135 136 libcurl 137 138 A client-side URL transfer library, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, 139 GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, 140 RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS 141 and WSS. 142 143 libcurl supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, 144 Kerberos, SPNEGO, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password 145 authentication, file transfer resume, http proxy tunneling and more. 146 147 libcurl is highly portable, it builds and works identically on numerous 148 platforms, including Solaris, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin, HP-UX, 149 IRIX, AIX, Tru64, Linux, UnixWare, HURD, Windows, Amiga, OS/2, macOS, 150 Ultrix, QNX, OpenVMS, RISC OS, Novell NetWare, DOS, Symbian, OSF, Android, 151 Minix, IBM TPF and more... 152 153 libcurl is free, thread-safe, IPv6 compatible, feature rich, well 154 supported and fast. 155 156 curl 157 158 A command line tool for getting or sending data using URL syntax. 159 160 Since curl uses libcurl, curl supports the same wide range of common 161 Internet protocols that libcurl does. 162 163 We pronounce curl with an initial k sound. It rhymes with words like girl 164 and earl. This is a short WAV file to help you: 165 166 https://media.merriam-webster.com/soundc11/c/curl0001.wav 167 168 There are numerous sub-projects and related projects that also use the word 169 curl in the project names in various combinations, but you should take 170 notice that this FAQ is directed at the command-line tool named curl (and 171 libcurl the library), and may therefore not be valid for other curl-related 172 projects. (There is however a small section for the PHP/CURL in this FAQ.) 173 174 1.2 What is libcurl? 175 176 libcurl is a reliable and portable library for doing Internet data transfers 177 using one or more of its supported Internet protocols. 178 179 You can use libcurl freely in your application, be it open source, 180 commercial or closed-source. 181 182 libcurl is most probably the most portable, most powerful and most often 183 used C-based multi-platform file transfer library on this planet - be it 184 open source or commercial. 185 186 1.3 What is curl not? 187 188 curl is not a wget clone. That is a common misconception. Never, during 189 curl's development, have we intended curl to replace wget or compete on its 190 market. curl is targeted at single-shot file transfers. 191 192 curl is not a website mirroring program. If you want to use curl to mirror 193 something: fine, go ahead and write a script that wraps around curl or use 194 libcurl to make it reality. 195 196 curl is not an FTP site mirroring program. Sure, get and send FTP with curl 197 but if you want systematic and sequential behavior you should write a 198 script (or write a new program that interfaces libcurl) and do it. 199 200 curl is not a PHP tool, even though it works perfectly well when used from 201 or with PHP (when using the PHP/CURL module). 202 203 curl is not a program for a single operating system. curl exists, compiles, 204 builds and runs under a wide range of operating systems, including all 205 modern Unixes (and a bunch of older ones too), Windows, Amiga, OS/2, macOS, 206 QNX etc. 207 208 1.4 When will you make curl do XXXX ? 209 210 We love suggestions of what to change in order to make curl and libcurl 211 better. We do however believe in a few rules when it comes to the future of 212 curl: 213 214 curl -- the command line tool -- is to remain a non-graphical command line 215 tool. If you want GUIs or fancy scripting capabilities, you should look for 216 another tool that uses libcurl. 217 218 We do not add things to curl that other small and available tools already do 219 well at the side. curl's output can be piped into another program or 220 redirected to another file for the next program to interpret. 221 222 We focus on protocol related issues and improvements. If you want to do more 223 magic with the supported protocols than curl currently does, chances are 224 good we will agree. If you want to add more protocols, we may agree. 225 226 If you want someone else to do all the work while you wait for us to 227 implement it for you, that is not a friendly attitude. We spend a 228 considerable time already on maintaining and developing curl. In order to 229 get more out of us, you should consider trading in some of your time and 230 effort in return. Simply go to the GitHub repository which resides at 231 https://github.com/curl/curl, fork the project, and create pull requests 232 with your proposed changes. 233 234 If you write the code, chances are better that it will get into curl faster. 235 236 1.5 Who makes curl? 237 238 curl and libcurl are not made by any single individual. Daniel Stenberg is 239 project leader and main developer, but other persons' submissions are 240 important and crucial. Anyone can contribute and post their changes and 241 improvements and have them inserted in the main sources (of course on the 242 condition that developers agree that the fixes are good). 243 244 The full list of all contributors is found in the docs/THANKS file. 245 246 curl is developed by a community, with Daniel at the wheel. 247 248 1.6 What do you get for making curl? 249 250 Project cURL is entirely free and open. We do this voluntarily, mostly in 251 our spare time. Companies may pay individual developers to work on curl. 252 This is not controlled by nor supervised in any way by the curl project. 253 254 We get help from companies. Haxx provides website, bandwidth, mailing lists 255 etc, GitHub hosts the primary git repository and other services like the bug 256 tracker at https://github.com/curl/curl. Also again, some companies have 257 sponsored certain parts of the development in the past and I hope some will 258 continue to do so in the future. 259 260 If you want to support our project, consider a donation or a banner-program 261 or even better: by helping us with coding, documenting or testing etc. 262 263 See also: https://curl.se/sponsors.html 264 265 1.7 What about CURL from curl.com? 266 267 During the summer of 2001, curl.com was busy advertising their client-side 268 programming language for the web, named CURL. 269 270 We are in no way associated with curl.com or their CURL programming 271 language. 272 273 Our project name curl has been in effective use since 1998. We were not the 274 first computer related project to use the name "curl" and do not claim any 275 rights to the name. 276 277 We recognize that we will be living in parallel with curl.com and wish them 278 every success. 279 280 1.8 I have a problem, who do I mail? 281 282 Please do not mail any single individual unless you really need to. Keep 283 curl-related questions on a suitable mailing list. All available mailing 284 lists are listed in the MANUAL document and online at 285 https://curl.se/mail/ 286 287 Keeping curl-related questions and discussions on mailing lists allows 288 others to join in and help, to share their ideas, to contribute their 289 suggestions and to spread their wisdom. Keeping discussions on public mailing 290 lists also allows for others to learn from this (both current and future 291 users thanks to the web based archives of the mailing lists), thus saving us 292 from having to repeat ourselves even more. Thanks for respecting this. 293 294 If you have found or simply suspect a security problem in curl or libcurl, 295 submit all the details at https://hackerone.one/curl. On there we keep the 296 issue private while we investigate, confirm it, work and validate a fix and 297 agree on a time schedule for publication etc. That way we produce a fix in a 298 timely manner before the flaw is announced to the world, reducing the impact 299 the problem risks having on existing users. 300 301 Security issues can also be taking to the curl security team by emailing 302 security at curl.se (closed list of receivers, mails are not disclosed). 303 304 1.9 Where do I buy commercial support for curl? 305 306 curl is fully open source. It means you can hire any skilled engineer to fix 307 your curl-related problems. 308 309 We list available alternatives on the curl website: 310 https://curl.se/support.html 311 312 1.10 How many are using curl? 313 314 It is impossible to tell. 315 316 We do not know how many users that knowingly have installed and use curl. 317 318 We do not know how many users that use curl without knowing that they are in 319 fact using it. 320 321 We do not know how many users that downloaded or installed curl and then 322 never use it. 323 324 In 2020, we estimate that curl runs in roughly ten billion installations 325 world wide. 326 327 1.11 Why do you not update ca-bundle.crt 328 329 In the cURL project we have decided not to attempt to keep this file updated 330 (or even present) since deciding what to add to a ca cert bundle is an 331 undertaking we have not been ready to accept, and the one we can get from 332 Mozilla is perfectly fine so there is no need to duplicate that work. 333 334 Today, with many services performed over HTTPS, every operating system 335 should come with a default ca cert bundle that can be deemed somewhat 336 trustworthy and that collection (if reasonably updated) should be deemed to 337 be a lot better than a private curl version. 338 339 If you want the most recent collection of ca certs that Mozilla Firefox 340 uses, we recommend that you extract the collection yourself from Mozilla 341 Firefox (by running 'make ca-bundle), or by using our online service setup 342 for this purpose: https://curl.se/docs/caextract.html 343 344 1.12 I have a problem who, can I chat with? 345 346 There is a bunch of friendly people hanging out in the #curl channel on the 347 IRC network libera.chat. If you are polite and nice, chances are good that 348 you can get -- or provide -- help instantly. 349 350 1.13 curl's ECCN number? 351 352 The US government restricts exports of software that contains or uses 353 cryptography. When doing so, the Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) 354 is used to identify the level of export control etc. 355 356 Apache Software Foundation gives a good explanation of ECCNs at 357 https://www.apache.org/dev/crypto.html 358 359 We believe curl's number might be ECCN 5D002, another possibility is 360 5D992. It seems necessary to write them (the authority that administers ECCN 361 numbers), asking to confirm. 362 363 Comprehensible explanations of the meaning of such numbers and how to obtain 364 them (resp.) are here 365 366 https://www.bis.doc.gov/licensing/exportingbasics.htm 367 https://www.bis.doc.gov/licensing/do_i_needaneccn.html 368 369 An incomprehensible description of the two numbers above is here 370 https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/new-encryption/1653-ccl5-pt2-3 371 372 1.14 How do I submit my patch? 373 374 We strongly encourage you to submit changes and improvements directly as 375 "pull requests" on GitHub: https://github.com/curl/curl/pulls 376 377 If you for any reason cannot or will not deal with GitHub, send your patch to 378 the curl-library mailing list. We are many subscribers there and there are 379 lots of people who can review patches, comment on them and "receive" them 380 properly. 381 382 Lots of more details are found in the CONTRIBUTE.md and INTERNALS.md 383 documents. 384 385 1.15 How do I port libcurl to my OS? 386 387 Here's a rough step-by-step: 388 389 1. copy a suitable lib/config-*.h file as a start to lib/config-[youros].h 390 391 2. edit lib/config-[youros].h to match your OS and setup 392 393 3. edit lib/curl_setup.h to include config-[youros].h when your OS is 394 detected by the preprocessor, in the style others already exist 395 396 4. compile lib/*.c and make them into a library 397 398 399 2. Install Related Problems 400 401 2.1 configure fails when using static libraries 402 403 You may find that configure fails to properly detect the entire dependency 404 chain of libraries when you provide static versions of the libraries that 405 configure checks for. 406 407 The reason why static libraries is much harder to deal with is that for them 408 we do not get any help but the script itself must know or check what more 409 libraries that are needed (with shared libraries, that dependency "chain" is 410 handled automatically). This is an error-prone process and one that also 411 tends to vary over time depending on the release versions of the involved 412 components and may also differ between operating systems. 413 414 For that reason, configure does few attempts to actually figure this out and 415 you are instead encouraged to set LIBS and LDFLAGS accordingly when you 416 invoke configure, and point out the needed libraries and set the necessary 417 flags yourself. 418 419 2.2 Does curl work with other SSL libraries? 420 421 curl has been written to use a generic SSL function layer internally, and 422 that SSL functionality can then be provided by one out of many different SSL 423 backends. 424 425 curl can be built to use one of the following SSL alternatives: OpenSSL, 426 LibreSSL, BoringSSL, AWS-LC, GnuTLS, wolfSSL, mbedTLS, Schannel (native 427 Windows) or Rustls. They all have their pros and cons, and we try to 428 maintain a comparison of them here: https://curl.se/docs/ssl-compared.html 429 430 2.3 How do I upgrade curl.exe in Windows? 431 432 The curl tool that is shipped as an integrated component of Windows 10 and 433 Windows 11 is managed by Microsoft. If you were to delete the file or 434 replace it with a newer version downloaded from https://curl.se/windows, 435 then Windows Update will cease to work on your system. 436 437 There is no way to independently force an upgrade of the curl.exe that is 438 part of Windows other than through the regular Windows update process. There 439 is also nothing the curl project itself can do about this, since this is 440 managed and controlled entirely by Microsoft as owners of the operating 441 system. 442 443 You can always download and install the latest version of curl for Windows 444 from https://curl.se/windows into a separate location. 445 446 2.4 Does curl support SOCKS (RFC 1928) ? 447 448 Yes, SOCKS 4 and 5 are supported. 449 450 3. Usage problems 451 452 3.1 curl: (1) SSL is disabled, https: not supported 453 454 If you get this output when trying to get anything from an HTTPS server, it 455 means that the instance of curl/libcurl that you are using was built without 456 support for this protocol. 457 458 This could have happened if the configure script that was run at build time 459 could not find all libs and include files curl requires for SSL to work. If 460 the configure script fails to find them, curl is simply built without SSL 461 support. 462 463 To get HTTPS support into a curl that was previously built but that reports 464 that HTTPS is not supported, you should dig through the document and logs 465 and check out why the configure script does not find the SSL libs and/or 466 include files. 467 468 Also, check out the other paragraph in this FAQ labeled "configure does not 469 find OpenSSL even when it is installed". 470 471 3.2 How do I tell curl to resume a transfer? 472 473 curl supports resumed transfers both ways on both FTP and HTTP. 474 Try the -C option. 475 476 3.3 Why does my posting using -F not work? 477 478 You cannot arbitrarily use -F or -d, the choice between -F or -d depends on 479 the HTTP operation you need curl to do and what the web server that will 480 receive your post expects. 481 482 If the form you are trying to submit uses the type 'multipart/form-data', 483 then and only then you must use the -F type. In all the most common cases, 484 you should use -d which then causes a posting with the type 485 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'. 486 487 This is described in some detail in the MANUAL and TheArtOfHttpScripting 488 documents, and if you do not understand it the first time, read it again 489 before you post questions about this to the mailing list. Also, try reading 490 through the mailing list archives for old postings and questions regarding 491 this. 492 493 3.4 How do I tell curl to run custom FTP commands? 494 495 You can tell curl to perform optional commands both before and/or after a 496 file transfer. Study the -Q/--quote option. 497 498 Since curl is used for file transfers, you do not normally use curl to 499 perform FTP commands without transferring anything. Therefore you must 500 always specify a URL to transfer to/from even when doing custom FTP 501 commands, or use -I which implies the "no body" option sent to libcurl. 502 503 3.5 How can I disable the Accept: */* header? 504 505 You can change all internally generated headers by adding a replacement with 506 the -H/--header option. By adding a header with empty contents you safely 507 disable that one. Use -H "Accept:" to disable that specific header. 508 509 3.6 Does curl support ASP, XML, XHTML or HTML version Y? 510 511 To curl, all contents are alike. It does not matter how the page was 512 generated. It may be ASP, PHP, Perl, shell-script, SSI or plain HTML 513 files. There is no difference to curl and it does not even know what kind of 514 language that generated the page. 515 516 See also item 3.14 regarding JavaScript. 517 518 3.7 Can I use curl to delete/rename a file through FTP? 519 520 Yes. You specify custom FTP commands with -Q/--quote. 521 522 One example would be to delete a file after you have downloaded it: 523 524 curl -O ftp://example.com/coolfile -Q '-DELE coolfile' 525 526 or rename a file after upload: 527 528 curl -T infile ftp://example.com/dir/ -Q "-RNFR infile" -Q "-RNTO newname" 529 530 3.8 How do I tell curl to follow HTTP redirects? 531 532 curl does not follow so-called redirects by default. The Location: header 533 that informs the client about this is only interpreted if you are using the 534 -L/--location option. As in: 535 536 curl -L http://example.com 537 538 Not all redirects are HTTP ones, see 4.14 539 540 3.9 How do I use curl in my favorite programming language? 541 542 Many programming languages have interfaces/bindings that allow you to use 543 curl without having to use the command line tool. If you are fluent in such 544 a language, you may prefer to use one of these interfaces instead. 545 546 Find out more about which languages that support curl directly, and how to 547 install and use them, in the libcurl section of the curl website: 548 https://curl.se/libcurl/ 549 550 All the various bindings to libcurl are made by other projects and people, 551 outside of the cURL project. The cURL project itself only produces libcurl 552 with its plain C API. If you do not find anywhere else to ask you can ask 553 about bindings on the curl-library list too, but be prepared that people on 554 that list may not know anything about bindings. 555 556 In December 2021, there were interfaces available for the following 557 languages: Ada95, Basic, C, C++, Ch, Cocoa, D, Delphi, Dylan, Eiffel, 558 Euphoria, Falcon, Ferite, Gambas, glib/GTK+, Go, Guile, Harbour, Haskell, 559 Java, Julia, Lisp, Lua, Mono, .NET, node.js, Object-Pascal, OCaml, Pascal, 560 Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, Python, R, Rexx, Ring, RPG, Ruby, Rust, Scheme, 561 Scilab, S-Lang, Smalltalk, SP-Forth, SPL, Tcl, Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, 562 Q, wxwidgets, XBLite and Xoho. By the time you read this, additional ones 563 may have appeared. 564 565 3.10 What about SOAP, WebDAV, XML-RPC or similar protocols over HTTP? 566 567 curl adheres to the HTTP spec, which basically means you can play with *any* 568 protocol that is built on top of HTTP. Protocols such as SOAP, WebDAV and 569 XML-RPC are all such ones. You can use -X to set custom requests and -H to 570 set custom headers (or replace internally generated ones). 571 572 Using libcurl is of course just as good and you would just use the proper 573 library options to do the same. 574 575 3.11 How do I POST with a different Content-Type? 576 577 You can always replace the internally generated headers with -H/--header. 578 To make a simple HTTP POST with text/xml as content-type, do something like: 579 580 curl -d "datatopost" -H "Content-Type: text/xml" [URL] 581 582 3.12 Why do FTP-specific features over HTTP proxy fail? 583 584 Because when you use an HTTP proxy, the protocol spoken on the network will 585 be HTTP, even if you specify an FTP URL. This effectively means that you 586 normally cannot use FTP-specific features such as FTP upload and FTP quote 587 etc. 588 589 There is one exception to this rule, and that is if you can "tunnel through" 590 the given HTTP proxy. Proxy tunneling is enabled with a special option (-p) 591 and is generally not available as proxy admins usually disable tunneling to 592 ports other than 443 (which is used for HTTPS access through proxies). 593 594 3.13 Why do my single/double quotes fail? 595 596 To specify a command line option that includes spaces, you might need to 597 put the entire option within quotes. Like in: 598 599 curl -d " with spaces " example.com 600 601 or perhaps 602 603 curl -d ' with spaces ' example.com 604 605 Exactly what kind of quotes and how to do this is entirely up to the shell 606 or command line interpreter that you are using. For most Unix shells, you 607 can more or less pick either single (') or double (") quotes. For 608 Windows/DOS command prompts you must use double (") quotes, and if the 609 option string contains inner double quotes you can escape them with a 610 backslash. 611 612 For Windows powershell the arguments are not always passed on as expected 613 because curl is not a powershell script. You may or may not be able to use 614 single quotes. To escape inner double quotes seems to require a 615 backslash-backtick escape sequence and the outer quotes as double quotes. 616 617 Please study the documentation for your particular environment. Examples in 618 the curl docs will use a mix of both of these as shown above. You must 619 adjust them to work in your environment. 620 621 Remember that curl works and runs on more operating systems than most single 622 individuals have ever tried. 623 624 3.14 Does curl support JavaScript or PAC (automated proxy config)? 625 626 Many webpages do magic stuff using embedded JavaScript. curl and libcurl 627 have no built-in support for that, so it will be treated just like any other 628 contents. 629 630 .pac files are a Netscape invention and are sometimes used by organizations 631 to allow them to differentiate which proxies to use. The .pac contents is 632 just a JavaScript program that gets invoked by the browser and that returns 633 the name of the proxy to connect to. Since curl does not support JavaScript, 634 it cannot support .pac proxy configuration either. 635 636 Some workarounds usually suggested to overcome this JavaScript dependency: 637 638 Depending on the JavaScript complexity, write up a script that translates it 639 to another language and execute that. 640 641 Read the JavaScript code and rewrite the same logic in another language. 642 643 Implement a JavaScript interpreter, people have successfully used the 644 Mozilla JavaScript engine in the past. 645 646 Ask your admins to stop this, for a static proxy setup or similar. 647 648 3.15 Can I do recursive fetches with curl? 649 650 No. curl itself has no code that performs recursive operations, such as 651 those performed by wget and similar tools. 652 653 There exists wrapper scripts with that functionality (for example the 654 curlmirror perl script), and you can write programs based on libcurl to do 655 it, but the command line tool curl itself cannot. 656 657 3.16 What certificates do I need when I use SSL? 658 659 There are three different kinds of "certificates" to keep track of when we 660 talk about using SSL-based protocols (HTTPS or FTPS) using curl or libcurl. 661 662 CLIENT CERTIFICATE 663 664 The server you communicate with may require that you can provide this in 665 order to prove that you actually are who you claim to be. If the server 666 does not require this, you do not need a client certificate. 667 668 A client certificate is always used together with a private key, and the 669 private key has a pass phrase that protects it. 670 671 SERVER CERTIFICATE 672 673 The server you communicate with has a server certificate. You can and should 674 verify this certificate to make sure that you are truly talking to the real 675 server and not a server impersonating it. 676 677 CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY CERTIFICATE ("CA cert") 678 679 You often have several CA certs in a CA cert bundle that can be used to 680 verify a server certificate that was signed by one of the authorities in the 681 bundle. curl does not come with a CA cert bundle but most curl installs 682 provide one. You can also override the default. 683 684 The server certificate verification process is made by using a Certificate 685 Authority certificate ("CA cert") that was used to sign the server 686 certificate. Server certificate verification is enabled by default in curl 687 and libcurl and is often the reason for problems as explained in FAQ entry 688 4.12 and the SSLCERTS document 689 (https://curl.se/docs/sslcerts.html). Server certificates that are 690 "self-signed" or otherwise signed by a CA that you do not have a CA cert 691 for, cannot be verified. If the verification during a connect fails, you are 692 refused access. You then need to explicitly disable the verification to 693 connect to the server. 694 695 3.17 How do I list the root directory of an FTP server? 696 697 There are two ways. The way defined in the RFC is to use an encoded slash 698 in the first path part. List the "/tmp" directory like this: 699 700 curl ftp://ftp.example.com/%2ftmp/ 701 702 or the not-quite-kosher-but-more-readable way, by simply starting the path 703 section of the URL with a slash: 704 705 curl ftp://ftp.example.com//tmp/ 706 707 3.18 Can I use curl to send a POST/PUT and not wait for a response? 708 709 No. 710 711 You can easily write your own program using libcurl to do such stunts. 712 713 3.19 How do I get HTTP from a host using a specific IP address? 714 715 For example, you may be trying out a website installation that is not yet in 716 the DNS. Or you have a site using multiple IP addresses for a given host 717 name and you want to address a specific one out of the set. 718 719 Set a custom Host: header that identifies the server name you want to reach 720 but use the target IP address in the URL: 721 722 curl --header "Host: www.example.com" http://127.0.0.1/ 723 724 You can also opt to add faked hostname entries to curl with the --resolve 725 option. That has the added benefit that things like redirects will also work 726 properly. The above operation would instead be done as: 727 728 curl --resolve www.example.com:80:127.0.0.1 http://www.example.com/ 729 730 3.20 How to SFTP from my user's home directory? 731 732 Contrary to how FTP works, SFTP and SCP URLs specify the exact directory to 733 work with. It means that if you do not specify that you want the user's home 734 directory, you get the actual root directory. 735 736 To specify a file in your user's home directory, you need to use the correct 737 URL syntax which for SFTP might look similar to: 738 739 curl -O -u user:password sftp://example.com/~/file.txt 740 741 and for SCP it is just a different protocol prefix: 742 743 curl -O -u user:password scp://example.com/~/file.txt 744 745 3.21 Protocol xxx not supported or disabled in libcurl 746 747 When passing on a URL to curl to use, it may respond that the particular 748 protocol is not supported or disabled. The particular way this error message 749 is phrased is because curl does not make a distinction internally of whether 750 a particular protocol is not supported (i.e. never got any code added that 751 knows how to speak that protocol) or if it was explicitly disabled. curl can 752 be built to only support a given set of protocols, and the rest would then 753 be disabled or not supported. 754 755 Note that this error will also occur if you pass a wrongly spelled protocol 756 part as in "htpt://example.com" or as in the less evident case if you prefix 757 the protocol part with a space as in " http://example.com/". 758 759 3.22 curl -X gives me HTTP problems 760 761 In normal circumstances, -X should hardly ever be used. 762 763 By default you use curl without explicitly saying which request method to 764 use when the URL identifies an HTTP transfer. If you just pass in a URL like 765 "curl http://example.com" it will use GET. If you use -d or -F curl will use 766 POST, -I will cause a HEAD and -T will make it a PUT. 767 768 If for whatever reason you are not happy with these default choices that curl 769 does for you, you can override those request methods by specifying -X 770 [WHATEVER]. This way you can for example send a DELETE by doing "curl -X 771 DELETE [URL]". 772 773 It is thus pointless to do "curl -XGET [URL]" as GET would be used anyway. 774 In the same vein it is pointless to do "curl -X POST -d data [URL]". You can 775 make a fun and somewhat rare request that sends a request-body in a GET 776 request with something like "curl -X GET -d data [URL]" 777 778 Note that -X does not actually change curl's behavior as it only modifies the 779 actual string sent in the request, but that may of course trigger a 780 different set of events. 781 782 Accordingly, by using -XPOST on a command line that for example would follow 783 a 303 redirect, you will effectively prevent curl from behaving 784 correctly. Be aware. 785 786 787 4. Running Problems 788 789 4.2 Why do I get problems when I use & or % in the URL? 790 791 In general Unix shells, the & symbol is treated specially and when used, it 792 runs the specified command in the background. To safely send the & as a part 793 of a URL, you should quote the entire URL by using single (') or double (") 794 quotes around it. Similar problems can also occur on some shells with other 795 characters, including ?*!$~(){}<>\|;`. When in doubt, quote the URL. 796 797 An example that would invoke a remote CGI that uses &-symbols could be: 798 799 curl 'http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/query?text=yes&q=curl' 800 801 In Windows, the standard DOS shell treats the percent sign specially and you 802 need to use TWO percent signs for each single one you want to use in the 803 URL. 804 805 If you want a literal percent sign to be part of the data you pass in a POST 806 using -d/--data you must encode it as '%25' (which then also needs the 807 percent sign doubled on Windows machines). 808 809 4.3 How can I use {, }, [ or ] to specify multiple URLs? 810 811 Because those letters have a special meaning to the shell, to be used in 812 a URL specified to curl you must quote them. 813 814 An example that downloads two URLs (sequentially) would be: 815 816 curl '{curl,www}.haxx.se' 817 818 To be able to use those characters as actual parts of the URL (without using 819 them for the curl URL "globbing" system), use the -g/--globoff option: 820 821 curl -g 'www.example.com/weirdname[].html' 822 823 4.4 Why do I get downloaded data even though the webpage does not exist? 824 825 curl asks remote servers for the page you specify. If the page does not exist 826 at the server, the HTTP protocol defines how the server should respond and 827 that means that headers and a "page" will be returned. That is simply how 828 HTTP works. 829 830 By using the --fail option you can tell curl explicitly to not get any data 831 if the HTTP return code does not say success. 832 833 4.5 Why do I get return code XXX from an HTTP server? 834 835 RFC 2616 clearly explains the return codes. This is a short transcript. Go 836 read the RFC for exact details: 837 838 4.5.1 "400 Bad Request" 839 840 The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed 841 syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications. 842 843 4.5.2 "401 Unauthorized" 844 845 The request requires user authentication. 846 847 4.5.3 "403 Forbidden" 848 849 The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. 850 Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated. 851 852 4.5.4 "404 Not Found" 853 854 The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication 855 is given as to whether the condition is temporary or permanent. 856 857 4.5.5 "405 Method Not Allowed" 858 859 The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the resource 860 identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an Allow header 861 containing a list of valid methods for the requested resource. 862 863 4.5.6 "301 Moved Permanently" 864 865 If you get this return code and an HTML output similar to this: 866 867 <H1>Moved Permanently</H1> The document has moved <A 868 HREF="http://same_url_now_with_a_trailing_slash/">here</A>. 869 870 it might be because you requested a directory URL but without the trailing 871 slash. Try the same operation again _with_ the trailing URL, or use the 872 -L/--location option to follow the redirection. 873 874 4.6 Can you tell me what error code 142 means? 875 876 All curl error codes are described at the end of the man page, in the 877 section called "EXIT CODES". 878 879 Error codes that are larger than the highest documented error code means 880 that curl has exited due to a crash. This is a serious error, and we 881 appreciate a detailed bug report from you that describes how we could go 882 ahead and repeat this. 883 884 4.7 How do I keep usernames and passwords secret in curl command lines? 885 886 This problem has two sides: 887 888 The first part is to avoid having clear-text passwords in the command line 889 so that they do not appear in 'ps' outputs and similar. That is easily 890 avoided by using the "-K" option to tell curl to read parameters from a file 891 or stdin to which you can pass the secret info. curl itself will also 892 attempt to "hide" the given password by blanking out the option - this 893 does not work on all platforms. 894 895 To keep the passwords in your account secret from the rest of the world is 896 not a task that curl addresses. You could of course encrypt them somehow to 897 at least hide them from being read by human eyes, but that is not what 898 anyone would call security. 899 900 Also note that regular HTTP (using Basic authentication) and FTP passwords 901 are sent as cleartext across the network. All it takes for anyone to fetch 902 them is to listen on the network. Eavesdropping is easy. Use more secure 903 authentication methods (like Digest, Negotiate or even NTLM) or consider the 904 SSL-based alternatives HTTPS and FTPS. 905 906 4.8 I found a bug 907 908 It is not a bug if the behavior is documented. Read the docs first. 909 Especially check out the KNOWN_BUGS file, it may be a documented bug. 910 911 If it is a problem with a binary you have downloaded or a package for your 912 particular platform, try contacting the person who built the package/archive 913 you have. 914 915 If there is a bug, read the BUGS document first. Then report it as described 916 in there. 917 918 4.9 curl cannot authenticate to a server that requires NTLM? 919 920 NTLM support requires OpenSSL, GnuTLS, mbedTLS or Microsoft Windows 921 libraries at build-time to provide this functionality. 922 923 4.10 My HTTP request using HEAD, PUT or DELETE does not work 924 925 Many web servers allow or demand that the administrator configures the 926 server properly for these requests to work on the web server. 927 928 Some servers seem to support HEAD only on certain kinds of URLs. 929 930 To fully grasp this, try the documentation for the particular server 931 software you are trying to interact with. This is not anything curl can do 932 anything about. 933 934 4.11 Why do my HTTP range requests return the full document? 935 936 Because the range may not be supported by the server, or the server may 937 choose to ignore it and return the full document anyway. 938 939 4.12 Why do I get "certificate verify failed" ? 940 941 When you invoke curl and get an error 60 error back it means that curl 942 could not verify that the server's certificate was good. curl verifies the 943 certificate using the CA cert bundle and verifying for which names the 944 certificate has been granted. 945 946 To completely disable the certificate verification, use -k. This does 947 however enable man-in-the-middle attacks and makes the transfer INSECURE. 948 We strongly advise against doing this for more than experiments. 949 950 If you get this failure with a CA cert bundle installed and used, the 951 server's certificate might not be signed by one of the CA's in your CA 952 store. It might for example be self-signed. You then correct this problem by 953 obtaining a valid CA cert for the server. Or again, decrease the security by 954 disabling this check. 955 956 At times, you find that the verification works in your favorite browser but 957 fails in curl. When this happens, the reason is usually that the server 958 sends an incomplete cert chain. The server is mandated to send all 959 "intermediate certificates" but does not. This typically works with browsers 960 anyway since they A) cache such certs and B) supports AIA which downloads 961 such missing certificates on demand. This is a server misconfiguration. A 962 good way to figure out if this is the case it to use the SSL Labs server 963 test and check the certificate chain: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ 964 965 Details are also in the SSLCERTS.md document, found online here: 966 https://curl.se/docs/sslcerts.html 967 968 4.13 Why is curl -R on Windows one hour off? 969 970 Since curl 7.53.0 this issue should be fixed as long as curl was built with 971 any modern compiler that allows for a 64-bit curl_off_t type. For older 972 compilers or prior curl versions it may set a time that appears one hour off. 973 This happens due to a flaw in how Windows stores and uses file modification 974 times and it is not easily worked around. For more details read this: 975 https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1144/Beating-the-Daylight-Savings-Time-bug-and-getting 976 977 4.14 Redirects work in browser but not with curl 978 979 curl supports HTTP redirects well (see item 3.8). Browsers generally support 980 at least two other ways to perform redirects that curl does not: 981 982 Meta tags. You can write an HTML tag that will cause the browser to redirect 983 to another given URL after a certain time. 984 985 JavaScript. You can write a JavaScript program embedded in an HTML page that 986 redirects the browser to another given URL. 987 988 There is no way to make curl follow these redirects. You must either 989 manually figure out what the page is set to do, or write a script that parses 990 the results and fetches the new URL. 991 992 4.15 FTPS does not work 993 994 curl supports FTPS (sometimes known as FTP-SSL) both implicit and explicit 995 mode. 996 997 When a URL is used that starts with FTPS://, curl assumes implicit SSL on 998 the control connection and will therefore immediately connect and try to 999 speak SSL. FTPS:// connections default to port 990. 1000 1001 To use explicit FTPS, you use an FTP:// URL and the --ssl-reqd option (or one 1002 of its related flavors). This is the most common method, and the one 1003 mandated by RFC 4217. This kind of connection will then of course use the 1004 standard FTP port 21 by default. 1005 1006 4.16 My HTTP POST or PUT requests are slow 1007 1008 libcurl makes all POST and PUT requests (except for requests with a small 1009 request body) use the "Expect: 100-continue" header. This header allows the 1010 server to deny the operation early so that libcurl can bail out before having 1011 to send any data. This is useful in authentication cases and others. 1012 1013 However, many servers do not implement the Expect: stuff properly and if the 1014 server does not respond (positively) within 1 second libcurl will continue 1015 and send off the data anyway. 1016 1017 You can disable libcurl's use of the Expect: header the same way you disable 1018 any header, using -H / CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, or by forcing it to use HTTP 1.0. 1019 1020 4.17 Non-functional connect timeouts 1021 1022 In most Windows setups having a timeout longer than 21 seconds make no 1023 difference, as it will only send 3 TCP SYN packets and no more. The second 1024 packet sent three seconds after the first and the third six seconds after 1025 the second. No more than three packets are sent, no matter how long the 1026 timeout is set. 1027 1028 See option TcpMaxConnectRetransmissions on this page: 1029 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/175523/en-us 1030 1031 Also, even on non-Windows systems there may run a firewall or anti-virus 1032 software or similar that accepts the connection but does not actually do 1033 anything else. This will make (lib)curl to consider the connection connected 1034 and thus the connect timeout will not trigger. 1035 1036 4.18 file:// URLs containing drive letters (Windows, NetWare) 1037 1038 When using curl to try to download a local file, one might use a URL 1039 in this format: 1040 1041 file://D:/blah.txt 1042 1043 you will find that even if D:\blah.txt does exist, curl returns a 'file 1044 not found' error. 1045 1046 According to RFC 1738 (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt), 1047 file:// URLs must contain a host component, but it is ignored by 1048 most implementations. In the above example, 'D:' is treated as the 1049 host component, and is taken away. Thus, curl tries to open '/blah.txt'. 1050 If your system is installed to drive C:, that will resolve to 'C:\blah.txt', 1051 and if that does not exist you will get the not found error. 1052 1053 To fix this problem, use file:// URLs with *three* leading slashes: 1054 1055 file:///D:/blah.txt 1056 1057 Alternatively, if it makes more sense, specify 'localhost' as the host 1058 component: 1059 1060 file://localhost/D:/blah.txt 1061 1062 In either case, curl should now be looking for the correct file. 1063 1064 4.19 Why does not curl return an error when the network cable is unplugged? 1065 1066 Unplugging a cable is not an error situation. The TCP/IP protocol stack 1067 was designed to be fault tolerant, so even though there may be a physical 1068 break somewhere the connection should not be affected, just possibly 1069 delayed. Eventually, the physical break will be fixed or the data will be 1070 re-routed around the physical problem through another path. 1071 1072 In such cases, the TCP/IP stack is responsible for detecting when the 1073 network connection is irrevocably lost. Since with some protocols it is 1074 perfectly legal for the client to wait indefinitely for data, the stack may 1075 never report a problem, and even when it does, it can take up to 20 minutes 1076 for it to detect an issue. The curl option --keepalive-time enables 1077 keep-alive support in the TCP/IP stack which makes it periodically probe the 1078 connection to make sure it is still available to send data. That should 1079 reliably detect any TCP/IP network failure. 1080 1081 TCP keep alive will not detect the network going down before the TCP/IP 1082 connection is established (e.g. during a DNS lookup) or using protocols that 1083 do not use TCP. To handle those situations, curl offers a number of timeouts 1084 on its own. --speed-limit/--speed-time will abort if the data transfer rate 1085 falls too low, and --connect-timeout and --max-time can be used to put an 1086 overall timeout on the connection phase or the entire transfer. 1087 1088 A libcurl-using application running in a known physical environment (e.g. 1089 an embedded device with only a single network connection) may want to act 1090 immediately if its lone network connection goes down. That can be achieved 1091 by having the application monitor the network connection on its own using an 1092 OS-specific mechanism, then signaling libcurl to abort (see also item 5.13). 1093 1094 4.20 curl does not return error for HTTP non-200 responses 1095 1096 Correct. Unless you use -f (--fail). 1097 1098 When doing HTTP transfers, curl will perform exactly what you are asking it 1099 to do and if successful it will not return an error. You can use curl to 1100 test your web server's "file not found" page (that gets 404 back), you can 1101 use it to check your authentication protected webpages (that gets a 401 1102 back) and so on. 1103 1104 The specific HTTP response code does not constitute a problem or error for 1105 curl. It simply sends and delivers HTTP as you asked and if that worked, 1106 everything is fine and dandy. The response code is generally providing more 1107 higher level error information that curl does not care about. The error was 1108 not in the HTTP transfer. 1109 1110 If you want your command line to treat error codes in the 400 and up range 1111 as errors and thus return a non-zero value and possibly show an error 1112 message, curl has a dedicated option for that: -f (CURLOPT_FAILONERROR in 1113 libcurl speak). 1114 1115 You can also use the -w option and the variable %{response_code} to extract 1116 the exact response code that was returned in the response. 1117 1118 5. libcurl Issues 1119 1120 5.1 Is libcurl thread-safe? 1121 1122 Yes. 1123 1124 We have written the libcurl code specifically adjusted for multi-threaded 1125 programs. libcurl will use thread-safe functions instead of non-safe ones if 1126 your system has such. Note that you must never share the same handle in 1127 multiple threads. 1128 1129 There may be some exceptions to thread safety depending on how libcurl was 1130 built. Please review the guidelines for thread safety to learn more: 1131 https://curl.se/libcurl/c/threadsafe.html 1132 1133 5.2 How can I receive all data into a large memory chunk? 1134 1135 [ See also the examples/getinmemory.c source ] 1136 1137 You are in full control of the callback function that gets called every time 1138 there is data received from the remote server. You can make that callback do 1139 whatever you want. You do not have to write the received data to a file. 1140 1141 One solution to this problem could be to have a pointer to a struct that you 1142 pass to the callback function. You set the pointer using the 1143 CURLOPT_WRITEDATA option. Then that pointer will be passed to the callback 1144 instead of a FILE * to a file: 1145 1146 /* imaginary struct */ 1147 struct MemoryStruct { 1148 char *memory; 1149 size_t size; 1150 }; 1151 1152 /* imaginary callback function */ 1153 size_t 1154 WriteMemoryCallback(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, void *data) 1155 { 1156 size_t realsize = size * nmemb; 1157 struct MemoryStruct *mem = (struct MemoryStruct *)data; 1158 1159 mem->memory = (char *)realloc(mem->memory, mem->size + realsize + 1); 1160 if (mem->memory) { 1161 memcpy(&(mem->memory[mem->size]), ptr, realsize); 1162 mem->size += realsize; 1163 mem->memory[mem->size] = 0; 1164 } 1165 return realsize; 1166 } 1167 1168 5.3 How do I fetch multiple files with libcurl? 1169 1170 libcurl has excellent support for transferring multiple files. You should 1171 just repeatedly set new URLs with curl_easy_setopt() and then transfer it 1172 with curl_easy_perform(). The handle you get from curl_easy_init() is not 1173 only reusable, but you are even encouraged to reuse it if you can, as that 1174 will enable libcurl to use persistent connections. 1175 1176 5.4 Does libcurl do Winsock initialization on Win32 systems? 1177 1178 Yes, if told to in the curl_global_init() call. 1179 1180 5.5 Does CURLOPT_WRITEDATA and CURLOPT_READDATA work on Win32 ? 1181 1182 Yes, but you cannot open a FILE * and pass the pointer to a DLL and have 1183 that DLL use the FILE * (as the DLL and the client application cannot access 1184 each others' variable memory areas). If you set CURLOPT_WRITEDATA you must 1185 also use CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION as well to set a function that writes the 1186 file, even if that simply writes the data to the specified FILE *. 1187 Similarly, if you use CURLOPT_READDATA you must also specify 1188 CURLOPT_READFUNCTION. 1189 1190 5.6 What about Keep-Alive or persistent connections? 1191 1192 curl and libcurl have excellent support for persistent connections when 1193 transferring several files from the same server. curl will attempt to reuse 1194 connections for all URLs specified on the same command line/config file, and 1195 libcurl will reuse connections for all transfers that are made using the 1196 same libcurl handle. 1197 1198 When you use the easy interface the connection cache is kept within the easy 1199 handle. If you instead use the multi interface, the connection cache will be 1200 kept within the multi handle and will be shared among all the easy handles 1201 that are used within the same multi handle. 1202 1203 5.7 Link errors when building libcurl on Windows 1204 1205 You need to make sure that your project, and all the libraries (both static 1206 and dynamic) that it links against, are compiled/linked against the same run 1207 time library. 1208 1209 This is determined by the /MD, /ML, /MT (and their corresponding /M?d) 1210 options to the command line compiler. /MD (linking against MSVCRT dll) seems 1211 to be the most commonly used option. 1212 1213 When building an application that uses the static libcurl library, you must 1214 add -DCURL_STATICLIB to your CFLAGS. Otherwise the linker will look for 1215 dynamic import symbols. If you are using Visual Studio, you need to instead 1216 add CURL_STATICLIB in the "Preprocessor Definitions" section. 1217 1218 If you get a linker error like "unknown symbol __imp__curl_easy_init ..." you 1219 have linked against the wrong (static) library. If you want to use the 1220 libcurl.dll and import lib, you do not need any extra CFLAGS, but use one of 1221 the import libraries below. These are the libraries produced by the various 1222 lib/Makefile.* files: 1223 1224 Target: static lib. import lib for libcurl*.dll. 1225 ----------------------------------------------------------- 1226 MinGW: libcurl.a libcurldll.a 1227 MSVC (release): libcurl.lib libcurl_imp.lib 1228 MSVC (debug): libcurld.lib libcurld_imp.lib 1229 Borland: libcurl.lib libcurl_imp.lib 1230 1231 5.8 libcurl.so.X: open failed: No such file or directory 1232 1233 This is an error message you might get when you try to run a program linked 1234 with a shared version of libcurl and your runtime linker (ld.so) could not 1235 find the shared library named libcurl.so.X. (Where X is the number of the 1236 current libcurl ABI, typically 3 or 4). 1237 1238 You need to make sure that ld.so finds libcurl.so.X. You can do that 1239 multiple ways, and it differs somewhat between different operating systems. 1240 They are usually: 1241 1242 * Add an option to the linker command line that specify the hard-coded path 1243 the runtime linker should check for the lib (usually -R) 1244 1245 * Set an environment variable (LD_LIBRARY_PATH for example) where ld.so 1246 should check for libs 1247 1248 * Adjust the system's config to check for libs in the directory where you have 1249 put the library (like Linux's /etc/ld.so.conf) 1250 1251 'man ld.so' and 'man ld' will tell you more details 1252 1253 5.9 How does libcurl resolve hostnames? 1254 1255 libcurl supports a large number of name resolve functions. One of them is 1256 picked at build-time and will be used unconditionally. Thus, if you want to 1257 change name resolver function you must rebuild libcurl and tell it to use a 1258 different function. 1259 1260 - The non-IPv6 resolver that can use one of four different hostname resolve 1261 calls (depending on what your system supports): 1262 1263 A - gethostbyname() 1264 B - gethostbyname_r() with 3 arguments 1265 C - gethostbyname_r() with 5 arguments 1266 D - gethostbyname_r() with 6 arguments 1267 1268 - The IPv6-resolver that uses getaddrinfo() 1269 1270 - The c-ares based name resolver that uses the c-ares library for resolves. 1271 Using this offers asynchronous name resolves. 1272 1273 - The threaded resolver (default option on Windows). It uses: 1274 1275 A - gethostbyname() on plain IPv4 hosts 1276 B - getaddrinfo() on IPv6 enabled hosts 1277 1278 Also note that libcurl never resolves or reverse-lookups addresses given as 1279 pure numbers, such as 127.0.0.1 or ::1. 1280 1281 5.10 How do I prevent libcurl from writing the response to stdout? 1282 1283 libcurl provides a default built-in write function that writes received data 1284 to stdout. Set the CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION to receive the data, or possibly 1285 set CURLOPT_WRITEDATA to a different FILE * handle. 1286 1287 5.11 How do I make libcurl not receive the whole HTTP response? 1288 1289 You make the write callback (or progress callback) return an error and 1290 libcurl will then abort the transfer. 1291 1292 5.12 Can I make libcurl fake or hide my real IP address? 1293 1294 No. libcurl operates on a higher level. Besides, faking IP address would 1295 imply sending IP packets with a made-up source address, and then you normally 1296 get a problem with receiving the packet sent back as they would then not be 1297 routed to you. 1298 1299 If you use a proxy to access remote sites, the sites will not see your local 1300 IP address but instead the address of the proxy. 1301 1302 Also note that on many networks NATs or other IP-munging techniques are used 1303 that makes you see and use a different IP address locally than what the 1304 remote server will see you coming from. You may also consider using 1305 https://www.torproject.org/ . 1306 1307 5.13 How do I stop an ongoing transfer? 1308 1309 With the easy interface you make sure to return the correct error code from 1310 one of the callbacks, but none of them are instant. There is no function you 1311 can call from another thread or similar that will stop it immediately. 1312 Instead, you need to make sure that one of the callbacks you use returns an 1313 appropriate value that will stop the transfer. Suitable callbacks that you 1314 can do this with include the progress callback, the read callback and the 1315 write callback. 1316 1317 If you are using the multi interface, you can also stop a transfer by 1318 removing the particular easy handle from the multi stack at any moment you 1319 think the transfer is done or when you wish to abort the transfer. 1320 1321 5.14 Using C++ non-static functions for callbacks? 1322 1323 libcurl is a C library, it does not know anything about C++ member functions. 1324 1325 You can overcome this "limitation" with relative ease using a static 1326 member function that is passed a pointer to the class: 1327 1328 // f is the pointer to your object. 1329 static size_t YourClass::func(void *buffer, size_t sz, size_t n, void *f) 1330 { 1331 // Call non-static member function. 1332 static_cast<YourClass*>(f)->nonStaticFunction(); 1333 } 1334 1335 // This is how you pass pointer to the static function: 1336 curl_easy_setopt(hcurl, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, YourClass::func); 1337 curl_easy_setopt(hcurl, CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, this); 1338 1339 5.15 How do I get an FTP directory listing? 1340 1341 If you end the FTP URL you request with a slash, libcurl will provide you 1342 with a directory listing of that given directory. You can also set 1343 CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST to alter what exact listing command libcurl would use 1344 to list the files. 1345 1346 The follow-up question tends to be how is a program supposed to parse the 1347 directory listing. How does it know what's a file and what's a directory and 1348 what's a symlink etc. If the FTP server supports the MLSD command then it 1349 will return data in a machine-readable format that can be parsed for type. 1350 The types are specified by RFC 3659 section 7.5.1. If MLSD is not supported 1351 then you have to work with what you are given. The LIST output format is 1352 entirely at the server's own liking and the NLST output does not reveal any 1353 types and in many cases does not even include all the directory entries. 1354 Also, both LIST and NLST tend to hide Unix-style hidden files (those that 1355 start with a dot) by default so you need to do "LIST -a" or similar to see 1356 them. 1357 1358 Example - List only directories. 1359 ftp.funet.fi supports MLSD and ftp.kernel.org does not: 1360 1361 curl -s ftp.funet.fi/pub/ -X MLSD | \ 1362 perl -lne 'print if s/(?:^|;)type=dir;[^ ]+ (.+)$/$1/' 1363 1364 curl -s ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ | \ 1365 perl -lne 'print if s/^d[-rwx]{9}(?: +[^ ]+){7} (.+)$/$1/' 1366 1367 If you need to parse LIST output in libcurl one such existing 1368 list parser is available at https://cr.yp.to/ftpparse.html Versions of 1369 libcurl since 7.21.0 also provide the ability to specify a wildcard to 1370 download multiple files from one FTP directory. 1371 1372 5.16 I want a different time-out 1373 1374 Sometimes users realize that CURLOPT_TIMEOUT and CURLOPT_CONNECTIMEOUT are 1375 not sufficiently advanced or flexible to cover all the various use cases and 1376 scenarios applications end up with. 1377 1378 libcurl offers many more ways to time-out operations. A common alternative 1379 is to use the CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_LIMIT and CURLOPT_LOW_SPEED_TIME options to 1380 specify the lowest possible speed to accept before to consider the transfer 1381 timed out. 1382 1383 The most flexible way is by writing your own time-out logic and using 1384 CURLOPT_XFERINFOFUNCTION (perhaps in combination with other callbacks) and 1385 use that to figure out exactly when the right condition is met when the 1386 transfer should get stopped. 1387 1388 5.17 Can I write a server with libcurl? 1389 1390 No. libcurl offers no functions or building blocks to build any kind of 1391 Internet protocol server. libcurl is only a client-side library. For server 1392 libraries, you need to continue your search elsewhere but there exist many 1393 good open source ones out there for most protocols you could want a server 1394 for. There are also really good stand-alone servers that have been tested 1395 and proven for many years. There is no need for you to reinvent them. 1396 1397 5.18 Does libcurl use threads? 1398 1399 Put simply: no, libcurl will execute in the same thread you call it in. All 1400 callbacks will be called in the same thread as the one you call libcurl in. 1401 1402 If you want to avoid your thread to be blocked by the libcurl call, you make 1403 sure you use the non-blocking multi API which will do transfers 1404 asynchronously - still in the same single thread. 1405 1406 libcurl will potentially internally use threads for name resolving, if it 1407 was built to work like that, but in those cases it will create the child 1408 threads by itself and they will only be used and then killed internally by 1409 libcurl and never exposed to the outside. 1410 1411 6. License Issues 1412 1413 curl and libcurl are released under an MIT/X derivative license. The license 1414 is liberal and should not impose a problem for your project. This section is 1415 just a brief summary for the cases we get the most questions. (Parts of this 1416 section was much enhanced by Bjorn Reese.) 1417 1418 We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. You should probably consult 1419 one if you want true and accurate legal insights without our prejudice. Note 1420 especially that this section concerns the libcurl license only; compiling in 1421 features of libcurl that depend on other libraries (e.g. OpenSSL) may affect 1422 the licensing obligations of your application. 1423 1424 6.1 I have a GPL program, can I use the libcurl library? 1425 1426 Yes 1427 1428 Since libcurl may be distributed under the MIT/X derivative license, it can 1429 be used together with GPL in any software. 1430 1431 6.2 I have a closed-source program, can I use the libcurl library? 1432 1433 Yes 1434 1435 libcurl does not put any restrictions on the program that uses the library. 1436 1437 6.3 I have a BSD licensed program, can I use the libcurl library? 1438 1439 Yes 1440 1441 libcurl does not put any restrictions on the program that uses the library. 1442 1443 6.4 I have a program that uses LGPL libraries, can I use libcurl? 1444 1445 Yes 1446 1447 The LGPL license does not clash with other licenses. 1448 1449 6.5 Can I modify curl/libcurl for my program and keep the changes secret? 1450 1451 Yes 1452 1453 The MIT/X derivative license practically allows you to do almost anything 1454 with the sources, on the condition that the copyright texts in the sources 1455 are left intact. 1456 1457 6.6 Can you please change the curl/libcurl license to XXXX? 1458 1459 No. 1460 1461 We have carefully picked this license after years of development and 1462 discussions and a large amount of people have contributed with source code 1463 knowing that this is the license we use. This license puts the restrictions 1464 we want on curl/libcurl and it does not spread to other programs or 1465 libraries that use it. It should be possible for everyone to use libcurl or 1466 curl in their projects, no matter what license they already have in use. 1467 1468 6.7 What are my obligations when using libcurl in my commercial apps? 1469 1470 Next to none. All you need to adhere to is the MIT-style license (stated in 1471 the COPYING file) which basically says you have to include the copyright 1472 notice in "all copies" and that you may not use the copyright holder's name 1473 when promoting your software. 1474 1475 You do not have to release any of your source code. 1476 1477 You do not have to reveal or make public any changes to the libcurl source 1478 code. 1479 1480 You do not have to broadcast to the world that you are using libcurl within 1481 your app. 1482 1483 All we ask is that you disclose "the copyright notice and this permission 1484 notice" somewhere. Most probably like in the documentation or in the section 1485 where other third party dependencies already are mentioned and acknowledged. 1486 1487 As can be seen here: https://curl.se/docs/companies.html and elsewhere, 1488 more and more companies are discovering the power of libcurl and take 1489 advantage of it even in commercial environments. 1490 1491 1492 7. PHP/CURL Issues 1493 1494 7.1 What is PHP/CURL? 1495 1496 The module for PHP that makes it possible for PHP programs to access curl- 1497 functions from within PHP. 1498 1499 In the cURL project we call this module PHP/CURL to differentiate it from 1500 curl the command line tool and libcurl the library. The PHP team however 1501 does not refer to it like this (for unknown reasons). They call it plain 1502 CURL (often using all caps) or sometimes ext/curl, but both cause much 1503 confusion to users which in turn gives us a higher question load. 1504 1505 7.2 Who wrote PHP/CURL? 1506 1507 PHP/CURL was initially written by Sterling Hughes. 1508 1509 7.3 Can I perform multiple requests using the same handle? 1510 1511 Yes - at least in PHP version 4.3.8 and later (this has been known to not 1512 work in earlier versions, but the exact version when it started to work is 1513 unknown to me). 1514 1515 After a transfer, you just set new options in the handle and make another 1516 transfer. This will make libcurl reuse the same connection if it can. 1517 1518 7.4 Does PHP/CURL have dependencies? 1519 1520 PHP/CURL is a module that comes with the regular PHP package. It depends on 1521 and uses libcurl, so you need to have libcurl installed properly before 1522 PHP/CURL can be used. 1523 1524 8. Development 1525 1526 8.1 Why does curl use C89? 1527 1528 As with everything in curl, there is a history and we keep using what we have 1529 used before until someone brings up the subject and argues for and works on 1530 changing it. 1531 1532 We started out using C89 in the 1990s because that was the only way to write 1533 a truly portable C program and have it run as widely as possible. C89 was for 1534 a long time even necessary to make things work on otherwise considered modern 1535 platforms such as Windows. Today, we do not really know how many users that 1536 still require the use of a C89 compiler. 1537 1538 We will continue to use C89 for as long as nobody brings up a strong enough 1539 reason for us to change our minds. The core developers of the project do not 1540 feel restricted by this and we are not convinced that going C99 will offer us 1541 enough of a benefit to warrant the risk of cutting off a share of users. 1542 1543 8.2 Will curl be rewritten? 1544 1545 In one go: no. Little by little over time? Maybe. 1546 1547 Over the years, new languages and clever operating environments come and go. 1548 Every now and then the urge apparently arises to request that we rewrite curl 1549 in another language. 1550 1551 Some the most important properties in curl are maintaining the API and ABI 1552 for libcurl and keeping the behavior for the command line tool. As long as we 1553 can do that, everything else is up for discussion. To maintain the ABI, we 1554 probably have to maintain a certain amount of code in C, and to remain rock 1555 stable, we will never risk anything by rewriting a lot of things in one go. 1556 That said, we can certainly offer more and more optional backends written in 1557 other languages, as long as those backends can be plugged in at build-time. 1558 Backends can be written in any language, but should probably provide APIs 1559 usable from C to ease integration and transition.