1 Short: b 2 Long: cookie 3 Arg: <data|filename> 4 Protocols: HTTP 5 Help: Send cookies from string/file 6 Category: http 7 --- 8 Pass the data to the HTTP server in the Cookie header. It is supposedly the 9 data previously received from the server in a "Set-Cookie:" line. The data 10 should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2". This makes curl use the 11 cookie header with this content explicitly in all outgoing request(s). If 12 multiple requests are done due to authentication, followed redirects or 13 similar, they will all get this cookie passed on. 14 15 If no '=' symbol is used in the argument, it is instead treated as a filename 16 to read previously stored cookie from. This option also activates the cookie 17 engine which will make curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if 18 you're using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL 19 transfers on the same invoke. If the file name is exactly a minus ("-"), curl 20 will instead read the contents from stdin. 21 22 The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers 23 (Set-Cookie style) or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format. 24 25 The file specified with --cookie is only used as input. No cookies will be 26 written to the file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option. 27 28 If you use the Set-Cookie file format and don't specify a domain then the 29 cookie is not sent since the domain will never match. To address this, set a 30 domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that will include sub-domains) or preferably: 31 use the Netscape format. 32 33 This option can be used multiple times. 34 35 Users very often want to both read cookies from a file and write updated 36 cookies back to a file, so using both --cookie and --cookie-jar in the same 37 command line is common. 38