cURL
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| cURL | |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 7.18.2 / June 4, 2008 |
| Written in | C |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| Genre | FTP client / HTTP client |
| License | MIT/X derivate license |
| Website | http://curl.haxx.se/ |
cURL is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax. The strong point of cURL is the number of data transfer protocols it supports (listed further down). Distributed under the MIT License, cURL is free software.
The main purpose and use for cURL is to automate unattended file transfers or sequences of operations. For example, it is a good tool for simulating a user's actions at a web browser. More nefariously, it is used at times to exploit security flaws on web sites[citation needed].
Libcurl is the corresponding library/API that users may incorporate into their programs; cURL acts as a stand-alone wrapper to the libcurl library. libcurl is used to provide URL transfer capabilities to numerous applications (open-source as well as proprietary).
Bindings for more than 30 languages are available for libcurl.
[edit] Supported protocols
Additional format support includes (and many other features):
- HTTPS certificates
- HTTP POST
- HTTP PUT
- FTP uploading
- Kerberos
- HTTP form based upload
- proxies
- cookies
- user+password authentication (Basic Digest NTLM and Negotiate for HTTP and kerberos4 for FTP)
- file transfer resume
- HTTP proxy tunneling
