curl network

We’re not covering curl here. Someone already did it better than we ever could — and honestly, they’re the reason this site exists.

Go read justuse.org/curl — it’s the page that made us realize man pages needed an attitude adjustment.

We owe them a beer. Or at least some traffic.

But since you’re already here — we’re not going to let you leave empty-handed.

---

Cheat sheet

What you’re doing	Command
Simple GET request	curl https://example.com
Save output to file	curl -o file.html https://example.com
Follow redirects	curl -L https://example.com
POST JSON data	curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"key":"val"}' https://api.example.com
POST form data	curl -d "user=me&pass=secret" https://example.com/login
Send a custom header	curl -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN" https://api.example.com
Download a file (keep filename)	curl -O https://example.com/file.tar.gz
Show response headers	curl -I https://example.com
Show everything (verbose)	curl -v https://example.com
Send with a cookie	curl -b "session=abc123" https://example.com
Upload a file	curl -F "file=@/path/to/file.png" https://example.com/upload
Ignore SSL errors	curl -k https://self-signed.example.com
Set a timeout	curl --connect-timeout 5 -m 10 https://example.com
Pipe to jq for JSON	curl -s https://api.example.com/data | jq '.'

Now go back to the list and pick something we actually wrote.