curl.md

Curl

Usage

• $ curl https://example.com or $ curl "https://example.com": GET request
• $ curl http://example.com --verbose -w "\nTotal time: %{time_total}s\n": GET request with time taken to complete the request
• $ curl -X POST https://example.com: POST request
• $ curl --verbose "127.0.0.1:3000": verbose mode i.e. shows the request and response headers and body

Just use -v instead of --verbose.

❯ curl --verbose "127.0.0.1:3000"
*   Trying 127.0.0.1:3000...
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 3000
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: 127.0.0.1:3000
> User-Agent: curl/8.4.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< content-length: 12
< date: Tue, 19 Dec 2023 18:05:38 GMT
< 
* Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
Hello World!% 

• $ curl https://example.com | json_pp: prettify the JSON output in terminal. Also, it shows the download, upload and total bytes transferred.

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100    61  100    33  100    28  45205  38356 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 61000
{
   "id" : 1337,
   "username" : "abhi3700"
}

• Post request with JSON body in 2 ways:
  • $ curl localhost:3000/users -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username":"abhi3700"}' | json_pp, where body.json is defined at current directory. {"username":"abhi3700"}
  • $ curl localhost:3000/users -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d @body.json | json_pp, where body.json is defined at current directory. body.json is really helpful in cases where JSON content is very big and might look clumsy to write in terminal.