Control statements

As of 4.2

These are case insensitive.

USER-AGENT string

Specify the User-Agent string to send to the HTTP server. Some badly done CGIs fail if its not set to "Mozilla/4.0". To encode blanks in the string, surround the string with single quote marks.

REFERER the linked-from URL

COOKIE “NAME=data”

e. g. “NAME1=value1; NAME2=value2"

If no '=' letter is used in the line, it is treated as a filename used to read previously stored cookie lines from, which should be used in this session if they match. Using this method also activates the "cookie parser" which will record incoming cookies too, which may be handy if you're using this in combination with the -L/--location option. The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format.

NOTE that the file specified with COOKIE is only used as input. No cookies will be stored in the file. To store cookies, save the HTTP headers to a file using DUMP-HEADER.

COOKIE-JAR filename

The name of a file that is to contain a copy of all cookies encountered either inbound or outbound.

DATA filename

Sends the specified data in a POST request to the HTTP server, in a way that can emulate as if a user has filled in a HTML form and pressed the submit button. The data is sent exactly as specified with all newlines cut off. It is expected to be "url-encoded". This will cause curl to pass the data to the server using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. If more than one DATA option is used on the same command line, the data pieces specified will be merged together with a separating semicolon. Thus, using 'DATA name=daniel skill=great' would generate a post chunk that looks like 'name=daniel&skill=great'.

If you start the data with the letter @, the rest should be a file name to read the data from. The contents of the file must already be url-encoded. Multiple files can also be specified. Posting data from a file named 'footbar' would thus be done with "DATA @footbar".

HEADER additional header parameters

Extra header to use when getting a web page. You may specify any number of extra headers.

DUMP-HEADERS filename

Write the HTTP headers to this file.

HEAD – retrieve headers only

SSLV2 - force SSL version 2

SSLV3 - force SSL version 3

WRITE-OUT string

Used with the following optional substitution values:

url_effective The URL that was fetched last.

http_code The numerical code that was found in the last retrieved HTTP(S) page.

time_total The total time, in seconds, that the full operation lasted. The time will be displayed with millisecond resolution.

time_namelookup The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the name resolving was completed.

time_connect The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the connect to the remote host (or proxy) was completed.

time_pretransfer The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the file transfer is just about to begin. This includes all pre-transfer commands and negotiations that are specific to the particular protocol(s) involved.

time_starttransfer The time, in seconds, it took from the start until the first byte is just about to be transferred. This includes time_pretransfer and also the time the server needs to calculate the result.

size_download The total amount of bytes that were downloaded.

size_upload The total amount of bytes that were uploaded.

size_header The total amount of bytes of the downloaded headers.

size_request The total amount of bytes that were sent in the HTTP request.

speed_download The average download speed that BR measured for the complete download.

speed_upload The average upload speed that BR measured for the complete upload.

content_type The Content-Type of the requested document, if there was any.