cURL (pronounced like "curl",[7]/kɜːrl/) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client for URL".[8]
History
curl was first released in 1996.[9] It was originally named httpget and then became urlget before adopting the current name of curl[10][11] The original author and lead developer is the Swedish developer Daniel Stenberg, who created curl because he wanted to automate the fetching of currency exchange rates for IRC users.[2]
curl is a command-line tool for getting or sending data including files using URL syntax. Since curl uses libcurl, it supports every protocol libcurl supports.[14]
curl supports HTTPS and performs SSL certificate verification by default when a secure protocol is specified such as HTTPS. When curl connects to a remote server via HTTPS, it will obtain the remote server certificate, then check against its CA certificate store the validity of the remote server to ensure the remote server is the one it claims to be. Some curl packages are bundled with CA certificate store file. There are several options to specify a CA certificate such as --cacert and --capath. The --cacert option can be used to specify the location of the CA certificate store file. In the Windows platform, if a CA certificate file is not specified, curl will look for a CA certificate file name “curl-ca-bundle.crt” in the following order:
Directory where the curl program is located.
Current working directory.
Windows system directory.
Windows directory.
Directories specified in the %PATH% environment variables.[21]
curl will return an error message if the remote server is using a self-signed certificate, or if the remote server certificate is not signed by a CA listed in the CA cert file. -k or --insecure option can be used to skip certificate verification. Alternatively, if the remote server is trusted, the remote server CA certificate can be added to the CA certificate store file.
Examples
Basic use of curl involves simply typing curl at the command line, followed by the URL of the output to retrieve:
$ curlwww.example.com
curl defaults to displaying the output it retrieves to the standard output specified on the system (usually the terminal window). So running the command above would, on most systems, display the www.example.com source-code in the terminal window. The -o flag can be used to store the output in a file instead:
$ curl-oexample.htmlwww.example.com
More options that change the tool's behavior are available.
^ ab"History of curl - How curl Became Like This". curl. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017. Retrieved November 17, 2016. Daniel simply adopted an existing command-line open-source tool, httpget, that Brazilian Rafael Sagula had written and recently release version 0.1 of. After a few minor adjustments, it did just what he needed. [...] HttpGet 1.0 was released on April 8th 1997 with brand new HTTP proxy support. [...] Stenberg was spending time writing an IRC bot for an Amiga related channel on EFnet. He then came up with the idea to make currency-exchange calculations available to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) users.
^Daniel Stenberg (18 September 2024). "curl 8.10.1". Retrieved 18 September 2024.
^ Del, Ryan (2 March 2018). "Comandi equivalenti a cURL e Wget per Windows command-line con Powershell" [cURL and Wget equivalent commands for Windows command-line with Powershell] (html). Ryadel (in Italian). Retrieved 4 January 2020. Per emulare il comportamento del comando Linux cURL, è sufficiente creare un file cURL.ps1 contenente la seguente riga di codice