curl: 8 Command Line Examples

curl is a great addition to any scripter's arsenal and I tend to use it quite a lot - so I thought I would demonstrate some of its features in this post.

Post data (as parameters) to url

curl -d _username="admin" -d password="<password>" https://127.0.0.1/login.php

Ensure curl follows redirects

curl -L google.com

Limit download bandwidth (2 MB per second)

curl --limit-rate 2M -O http://speedtest.newark.linode.com/100MB-newark.bin

Perform basic authentication

curl -u username:password https://localhost/restrictedarea

Enabling debug mode

curl -v https://localhost/file.zip

Using a HTTP proxy

curl -x proxy.squid.com:3128 https://google.com

Spoofing your user agent

curl -A "Spoofed User Agent" https://google.co.uk

Sending cookies along with a request

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