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1 Short: E
2 Long: cert
3 Arg: <certificate[:password]>
4 Help: Client certificate file and password
5 Protocols: TLS
6 See-also: cert-type key key-type
7 Category: tls
8 ---
9 Tells curl to use the specified client certificate file when getting a file
10 with HTTPS, FTPS or another SSL-based protocol. The certificate must be in
11 PKCS#12 format if using Secure Transport, or PEM format if using any other
12 engine.  If the optional password isn't specified, it will be queried for on
13 the terminal. Note that this option assumes a \&"certificate" file that is the
14 private key and the client certificate concatenated! See --cert and --key to
15 specify them independently.
16 
17 If curl is built against the NSS SSL library then this option can tell
18 curl the nickname of the certificate to use within the NSS database defined
19 by the environment variable SSL_DIR (or by default /etc/pki/nssdb). If the
20 NSS PEM PKCS#11 module (libnsspem.so) is available then PEM files may be
21 loaded. If you want to use a file from the current directory, please precede
22 it with "./" prefix, in order to avoid confusion with a nickname.  If the
23 nickname contains ":", it needs to be preceded by "\\" so that it is not
24 recognized as password delimiter.  If the nickname contains "\\", it needs to
25 be escaped as "\\\\" so that it is not recognized as an escape character.
26 
27 If curl is built against OpenSSL library, and the engine pkcs11 is available,
28 then a PKCS#11 URI (RFC 7512) can be used to specify a certificate located in
29 a PKCS#11 device. A string beginning with "pkcs11:" will be interpreted as a
30 PKCS#11 URI. If a PKCS#11 URI is provided, then the --engine option will be set
31 as "pkcs11" if none was provided and the --cert-type option will be set as
32 "ENG" if none was provided.
33 
34 (iOS and macOS only) If curl is built against Secure Transport, then the
35 certificate string can either be the name of a certificate/private key in the
36 system or user keychain, or the path to a PKCS#12-encoded certificate and
37 private key. If you want to use a file from the current directory, please
38 precede it with "./" prefix, in order to avoid confusion with a nickname.
39 
40 (Schannel only) Client certificates must be specified by a path
41 expression to a certificate store. (Loading PFX is not supported; you can
42 import it to a store first). You can use
43 "<store location>\\<store name>\\<thumbprint>" to refer to a certificate
44 in the system certificates store, for example,
45 "CurrentUser\\MY\\934a7ac6f8a5d579285a74fa61e19f23ddfe8d7a". Thumbprint is
46 usually a SHA-1 hex string which you can see in certificate details. Following
47 store locations are supported: CurrentUser, LocalMachine, CurrentService,
48 Services, CurrentUserGroupPolicy, LocalMachineGroupPolicy,
49 LocalMachineEnterprise.
50 
51 If this option is used several times, the last one will be used.
52