cURL

What is cURL?

cURL, created in 1997 by Daniel Stenberg, has grown into a staple for developers needing to interact with web services from scripts or terminals. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SCP, SFTP, and more, making it a versatile replacement for GUI tools like Postman.

Its audience is primarily developers, sysadmins, and power users who prefer scripts and automation over graphical interfaces. The learning curve is steep for newcomers, but once mastered, cURL feels lightweight and scriptable.

Compared to Postman, cURL lacks a visual request builder, but it offers precise control over headers, authentication, and data payloads, and it integrates directly into shell pipelines.

Best for: Automating web requests and integrating API calls into shell scripts.

Key features of cURL

• Supports 20+ protocols
• Built‑in SSL/TLS verification
• Customizable headers and cookies
• Recursive downloads
• Data upload via POST/PUT
• Supports proxies and authentication
• Can output raw response headers
• Extensible via libcurl

Tips for Windows users

From Postman, export requests as cURL commands via the "Code" dialog. Use the -H flag for headers, -d for data, and -X for method. Replace Postman’s environment variables with shell variables or --data-urlencode. Shortcuts: curl -I for headers, curl -L for redirects, curl -v for verbose. Workflow: write a shell script, use curl commands, and pipe output to jq for JSON parsing.