curl/docs/cmdline-opts/data.md

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c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, daniel@haxx.se, et al. SPDX-License-Identifier: curl Long: data Short: d Arg: Help: HTTP POST data Protocols: HTTP MQTT Mutexed: form head upload-file Category: important http post upload Added: 4.0 Multi: append See-also:

• data-binary
• data-urlencode
• data-raw Example:
• -d "name=curl" $URL
• -d "name=curl" -d "tool=cmdline" $URL
• -d @filename $URL ---

--data

Sends the specified data in a POST request to the HTTP server, in the same way that a browser does when a user has filled in an HTML form and presses the submit button. This makes curl pass the data to the server using the content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Compare to --form.

--data-raw is almost the same but does not have a special interpretation of the @ character. To post data purely binary, you should instead use the --data-binary option. To URL-encode the value of a form field you may use --data-urlencode.

If any of these options is used more than once on the same command line, the data pieces specified are merged with a separating &-symbol. Thus, using '-d name=daniel -d skill=lousy' would generate a post chunk that looks like 'name=daniel&skill=lousy'.

If you start the data with the letter @, the rest should be a file name to read the data from, or - if you want curl to read the data from stdin. Posting data from a file named 'foobar' would thus be done with --data @foobar. When --data is told to read from a file like that, carriage returns and newlines are stripped out. If you do not want the @ character to have a special interpretation use --data-raw instead.

The data for this option is passed on to the server exactly as provided on the command line. curl does not convert, change or improve it. It is up to the user to provide the data in the correct form.