cURL Essential Commands Cheatsheet

Goal

Provide a quick reference for commonly used cURL commands.

GET Request

curl localhost:8080

POST Form Data

Default content type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/data -d "param1=value1&param2=value2" 
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/data -d "@data.txt"

POST JSON

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/data -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{\"key1\":\"value1\", \"key2\":\"value2\"}' 
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/data -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "@data.json"

In PowerShell, escape double quotes with \.

Skip Certificate Validation

curl -k https://localhost:8080

Bearer Token Authentication

curl https://bustroker.com/api/resource -H 'Accept: application/json' -H "Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>"

Add Newline After Output

curl localhost:8080 ;echo

Format JSON Response (Linux)

Using json_pp:

curl localhost:8080 | json_pp

Using jq:

curl localhost:8080 | jq "."

Extract JSON Properties (Linux)

The -r flag outputs raw values without surrounding quotes:

curl localhost:8080 | jq -r ".some.property.in_Json.tree"