curl

curl linux command cheatsheet by Thamizhiniyan C S

Introduction

curl is a tool for transferring data from or to a server using URLs. It supports these protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS.

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Syntax

curl [options...]

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Important Flags

Flags	Description
-#	Will display a progress meter for you to know how much the download has progressed.(or use --silent flag for a silent crawl)
-o	Saves the file downloaded with the name given following the flag.
-O	Saves the file with the name it was saved on the server.
-C -	This flag can resume your broken download without specifying an offset.
--limit-rate	Limits the download/upload rate to somewhere near the specified range (Units in 100K,100M,100G)
-u	Provides user authentication (Format: -u user:password)
-T	Helps in uploading the file to some server(In our case php-reverse-shell)
-x	If you have to view the page through a PROXY. You can specify the proxy server with this flag. (-x proxy.server.com -u user:password(Authentication for proxy server))
-I	(Caps i) Queries the header and not the webpage.
-A	You can specify user agent to make request to the server
-L	Tells curl to follow redirects
-b	This flag allows you to specify cookies while making a curl request(Cookie should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1;NAME2=VALUE2")
-d	This flag can be used to POST data to the server(generally used for posting form data).
-X	To specify the HTTP method on the URL. (GET,POST,TRACE,OPTIONS)

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Examples

Command	Description
curl -h	cURL help menu
curl inlanefreight.com	Basic GET request
curl -s -O inlanefreight.com/index.html	Download file
curl -k https://inlanefreight.com	Skip HTTPS (SSL) certificate validation
curl inlanefreight.com -v	Print full HTTP request/response details
curl -I https://www.inlanefreight.com	Send HEAD request (only prints response headers)
curl -i https://www.inlanefreight.com	Print response headers and response body
curl https://www.inlanefreight.com -A 'Mozilla/5.0'	Set User-Agent header
curl -u admin:admin http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/	Set HTTP basic authorization credentials
curl http://admin:admin@<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/	Pass HTTP basic authorization credentials in the URL
curl -H 'Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=' http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/	Set request header
curl 'http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/search.php?search=le'	Pass GET parameters
curl -X POST -d 'username=admin&password=admin' http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/	Send POST request with POST data
curl -b 'PHPSESSID=c1nsa6op7vtk7kdis7bcnbadf1' http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/	Set request cookies
curl -X POST -d '{"search":"london"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/search.php	Send POST request with JSON data

APIs

Command	Description
curl http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/api.php/city/london	Read entry
curl -s http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/api.php/city/ | jq	jq
curl -X POST http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/api.php/city/ -d '{"city_name":"HTB_City", "country_name":"HTB"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'	Create (add) entry
curl -X PUT http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/api.php/city/london -d '{"city_name":"New_HTB_City", "country_name":"HTB"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'	Update (modify) entry
curl -X DELETE http://<SERVER_IP>:<PORT>/api.php/city/New_HTB_City	Delete entry