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- .\" * Copyright (C) 1998 - 2018, Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al.
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- .TH CURLOPT_URL 3 "July 24, 2018" "libcurl 7.61.1" "curl_easy_setopt options"
- .SH NAME
- CURLOPT_URL \- provide the URL to use in the request
- .SH SYNOPSIS
- #include <curl/curl.h>
- CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_URL, char *URL);
- .SH DESCRIPTION
- Pass in a pointer to the \fIURL\fP to work with. The parameter should be a
- char * to a zero terminated string which must be URL-encoded in the following
- format:
- scheme://host:port/path
- For a greater explanation of the format please see RFC3986.
- libcurl doesn't validate the syntax or use this variable until the transfer is
- issued. Even if you set a crazy value here, \fIcurl_easy_setopt(3)\fP will
- still return \fICURLE_OK\fP.
- If the given URL is missing a scheme name (such as "http://" or "ftp://" etc)
- then libcurl will make a guess based on the host. If the outermost sub-domain
- name matches DICT, FTP, IMAP, LDAP, POP3 or SMTP then that protocol will be
- used, otherwise HTTP will be used. Since 7.45.0 guessing can be disabled by
- setting a default protocol, see \fICURLOPT_DEFAULT_PROTOCOL(3)\fP for details.
- Should the protocol, either that specified by the scheme or deduced by libcurl
- from the host name, not be supported by libcurl then
- \fICURLE_UNSUPPORTED_PROTOCOL\fP will be returned from either the
- \fIcurl_easy_perform(3)\fP or \fIcurl_multi_perform(3)\fP functions when you
- call them. Use \fIcurl_version_info(3)\fP for detailed information of which
- protocols are supported by the build of libcurl you are using.
- \fICURLOPT_PROTOCOLS(3)\fP can be used to limit what protocols libcurl will
- use for this transfer, independent of what libcurl has been compiled to
- support. That may be useful if you accept the URL from an external source and
- want to limit the accessibility.
- \fICURLOPT_URL(3)\fP is the only option that \fBmust\fP be set before a
- transfer is started.
- The host part of the URL contains the address of the server that you want to
- connect to. This can be the fully qualified domain name of the server, the
- local network name of the machine on your network or the IP address of the
- server or machine represented by either an IPv4 or IPv6 address. For example:
- http://www.example.com/
- http://hostname/
- http://192.168.0.1/
- http://[2001:1890:1112:1::20]/
- It is also possible to specify the user name, password and any supported login
- options as part of the host, for the following protocols, when connecting to
- servers that require authentication:
- http://user:password@www.example.com
- ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com
- smb://domain%2fuser:password@server.example.com
- imap://user:password;options@mail.example.com
- pop3://user:password;options@mail.example.com
- smtp://user:password;options@mail.example.com
- At present only IMAP, POP3 and SMTP support login options as part of the host.
- For more information about the login options in URL syntax please see RFC2384,
- RFC5092 and IETF draft draft-earhart-url-smtp-00.txt (Added in 7.31.0).
- The port is optional and when not specified libcurl will use the default port
- based on the determined or specified protocol: 80 for HTTP, 21 for FTP and 25
- for SMTP, etc. The following examples show how to specify the port:
- http://www.example.com:8080/ - This will connect to a web server using port
- 8080 rather than 80.
- smtp://mail.example.com:587/ - This will connect to a SMTP server on the
- alternative mail port.
- The path part of the URL is protocol specific and whilst some examples are
- given below this list is not conclusive:
- .IP HTTP
- The path part of an HTTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
- directory. If the directory is not specified then the web server's root
- directory is used. If the file is omitted then the default document will be
- retrieved for either the directory specified or the root directory. The exact
- resource returned for each URL is entirely dependent on the server's
- configuration.
- http://www.example.com - This gets the main page from the web server.
- http://www.example.com/index.html - This returns the main page by explicitly
- requesting it.
- http://www.example.com/contactus/ - This returns the default document from
- the contactus directory.
- .IP FTP
- The path part of an FTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
- directory. If the file part is omitted then libcurl downloads the directory
- listing for the directory specified. If the directory is omitted then
- the directory listing for the root / home directory will be returned.
- ftp://ftp.example.com - This retrieves the directory listing for the root
- directory.
- ftp://ftp.example.com/readme.txt - This downloads the file readme.txt from the
- root directory.
- ftp://ftp.example.com/libcurl/readme.txt - This downloads readme.txt from the
- libcurl directory.
- ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com/readme.txt - This retrieves the readme.txt
- file from the user's home directory. When a username and password is
- specified, everything that is specified in the path part is relative to the
- user's home directory. To retrieve files from the root directory or a
- directory underneath the root directory then the absolute path must be
- specified by prepending an additional forward slash to the beginning of the
- path.
- ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com//readme.txt - This retrieves the readme.txt
- from the root directory when logging in as a specified user.
- .IP SMTP
- The path part of a SMTP request specifies the host name to present during
- communication with the mail server. If the path is omitted then libcurl will
- attempt to resolve the local computer's host name. However, this may not
- return the fully qualified domain name that is required by some mail servers
- and specifying this path allows you to set an alternative name, such as
- your machine's fully qualified domain name, which you might have obtained
- from an external function such as gethostname or getaddrinfo.
- smtp://mail.example.com - This connects to the mail server at example.com and
- sends your local computer's host name in the HELO / EHLO command.
- smtp://mail.example.com/client.example.com - This will send client.example.com in
- the HELO / EHLO command to the mail server at example.com.
- .IP POP3
- The path part of a POP3 request specifies the message ID to retrieve. If the
- ID is not specified then a list of waiting messages is returned instead.
- pop3://user:password@mail.example.com - This lists the available messages for
- the user
- pop3://user:password@mail.example.com/1 - This retrieves the first message for
- the user
- .IP IMAP
- The path part of an IMAP request not only specifies the mailbox to list (Added
- in 7.30.0) or select, but can also be used to check the UIDVALIDITY of the
- mailbox, to specify the UID, SECTION (Added in 7.30.0) and PARTIAL octets
- (Added in 7.37.0) of the message to fetch and to specify what messages to
- search for (Added in 7.37.0).
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com - Performs a top level folder list
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX - Performs a folder list on the
- user's inbox
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=1 - Selects the user's inbox
- and fetches message 1
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX;UIDVALIDITY=50/;UID=2 - Selects
- the user's inbox, checks the UIDVALIDITY of the mailbox is 50 and fetches
- message 2 if it is
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=3/;SECTION=TEXT - Selects the
- user's inbox and fetches the text portion of message 3
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX/;UID=4/;PARTIAL=0.1024 - Selects
- the user's inbox and fetches the first 1024 octets of message 4
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX?NEW - Selects the user's inbox and
- checks for NEW messages
- imap://user:password@mail.example.com/INBOX?SUBJECT%20shadows - Selects the
- user's inbox and searches for messages containing "shadows" in the subject
- line
- For more information about the individual components of an IMAP URL please
- see RFC5092.
- .IP SCP
- The path part of a SCP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
- directory. The file part may not be omitted. The file is taken as an absolute
- path from the root directory on the server. To specify a path relative to the
- user's home directory on the server, prepend ~/ to the path portion. If the
- user name is not embedded in the URL, it can be set with the
- \fICURLOPT_USERPWD(3)\fP or \fICURLOPT_USERNAME(3)\fP option.
- scp://user@example.com/etc/issue - This specifies the file /etc/issue
- scp://example.com/~/my-file - This specifies the file my-file in the
- user's home directory on the server
- .IP SFTP
- The path part of a SFTP request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
- directory. If the file part is omitted then libcurl downloads the directory
- listing for the directory specified. If the path ends in a / then a directory
- listing is returned instead of a file. If the path is omitted entirely then
- the directory listing for the root / home directory will be returned. If the
- user name is not embedded in the URL, it can be set with the
- \fICURLOPT_USERPWD(3)\fP or \fICURLOPT_USERNAME(3)\fP option.
- sftp://user:password@example.com/etc/issue - This specifies the file
- /etc/issue
- sftp://user@example.com/~/my-file - This specifies the file my-file in the
- user's home directory
- sftp://ssh.example.com/~/Documents/ - This requests a directory listing
- of the Documents directory under the user's home directory
- .IP SMB
- The path part of a SMB request specifies the file to retrieve and from what
- share and directory or the share to upload to and as such, may not be omitted.
- If the user name is not embedded in the URL, it can be set with the
- \fICURLOPT_USERPWD(3)\fP or \fICURLOPT_USERNAME(3)\fP option. If the user name
- is embedded in the URL then it must contain the domain name and as such, the
- backslash must be URL encoded as %2f.
- smb://server.example.com/files/issue - This specifies the file "issue" located
- in the root of the "files" share
- smb://server.example.com/files/ -T issue - This specifies the file "issue" will
- be uploaded to the root of the "files" share.
- .IP LDAP
- The path part of a LDAP request can be used to specify the: Distinguished
- Name, Attributes, Scope, Filter and Extension for a LDAP search. Each field
- is separated by a question mark and when that field is not required an empty
- string with the question mark separator should be included.
- ldap://ldap.example.com/o=My%20Organisation - This will perform a LDAP search
- with the DN as My Organisation.
- ldap://ldap.example.com/o=My%20Organisation?postalAddress - This will perform
- the same search but will only return postalAddress attributes.
- ldap://ldap.example.com/?rootDomainNamingContext - This specifies an empty DN
- and requests information about the rootDomainNamingContext attribute for an
- Active Directory server.
- For more information about the individual components of a LDAP URL please
- see RFC4516.
- .IP RTMP
- There's no official URL spec for RTMP so libcurl uses the URL syntax supported
- by the underlying librtmp library. It has a syntax where it wants a
- traditional URL, followed by a space and a series of space-separated
- name=value pairs.
- While space is not typically a "legal" letter, libcurl accepts them. When a
- user wants to pass in a '#' (hash) character it will be treated as a fragment
- and get cut off by libcurl if provided literally. You will instead have to
- escape it by providing it as backslash and its ASCII value in hexadecimal:
- "\\23".
- .RS 0
- The application does not have to keep the string around after setting this
- option.
- .SH ENCODING
- The string pointed to in the \fICURLOPT_URL(3)\fP argument is generally
- expected to be a sequence of characters using an ASCII compatible encoding.
- If libcurl is built with IDN support, the server name part of the URL can use
- an "international name" by using the current encoding (according to locale) or
- UTF-8 (when winidn is used).
- If libcurl is built without IDN support, the server name is used exactly as
- specified when passed to the name resolver functions.
- .SH DEFAULT
- There is no default URL. If this option isn't set, no transfer can be
- performed.
- .SH SECURITY CONCERNS
- Applications may at times find it convenient to allow users to specify URLs
- for various purposes and that string would then end up fed to this option.
- Getting a URL from an external untrusted party will bring reasons for several
- security concerns:
- If you have an application that runs as or in a server application, getting an
- unfiltered URL can easily trick your application to access a local resource
- instead of a remote. Protecting yourself against localhost accesses is very
- hard when accepting user provided URLs.
- Such custom URLs can also access other ports than you planned as port numbers
- are part of the regular URL format. The combination of a local host and a
- custom port number can allow external users to play tricks with your local
- services.
- Accepting external URLs may also use other protocols than http:// or other
- common ones. Restrict what accept with \fICURLOPT_PROTOCOLS(3)\fP.
- User provided URLs can also be made to point to sites that redirect further on
- (possibly to other protocols too). Consider your
- \fICURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION(3)\fP and \fICURLOPT_REDIR_PROTOCOLS(3)\fP settings.
- .SH PROTOCOLS
- All
- .SH EXAMPLE
- .nf
- CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
- if(curl) {
- curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com");
- curl_easy_perform(curl);
- }
- .fi
- .SH AVAILABILITY
- POP3 and SMTP were added in 7.31.0
- .SH RETURN VALUE
- Returns CURLE_OK on success or CURLE_OUT_OF_MEMORY if there was insufficient
- heap space.
- Note that \fIcurl_easy_setopt(3)\fP won't actually parse the given string so
- given a bad URL, it will not be detected until \fIcurl_easy_perform(3)\fP or
- similar is called.
- .SH "SEE ALSO"
- .BR CURLOPT_VERBOSE "(3), " CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS "(3), "
- .BR CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE "(3), " CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT "(3), "
- .BR curl_easy_perform "(3), "
- .BR CURLINFO_REDIRECT_URL "(3), " CURLOPT_PATH_AS_IS "(3), "
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