1 c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. 2 SPDX-License-Identifier: curl 3 Short: b 4 Long: cookie 5 Arg: <data|filename> 6 Protocols: HTTP 7 Help: Send cookies from string/file 8 Category: http 9 Example: -b cookiefile $URL 10 Example: -b cookiefile -c cookiefile $URL 11 See-also: cookie-jar junk-session-cookies 12 Added: 4.9 13 Multi: append 14 --- 15 Pass the data to the HTTP server in the Cookie header. It is supposedly the 16 data previously received from the server in a "Set-Cookie:" line. The data 17 should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2". This makes curl use the 18 cookie header with this content explicitly in all outgoing request(s). If 19 multiple requests are done due to authentication, followed redirects or 20 similar, they all get this cookie passed on. 21 22 If no '=' symbol is used in the argument, it is instead treated as a filename 23 to read previously stored cookie from. This option also activates the cookie 24 engine which makes curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if you are 25 using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL 26 transfers on the same invoke. If the file name is exactly a minus ("-"), curl 27 instead reads the contents from stdin. 28 29 The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers 30 (Set-Cookie style) or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format. 31 32 The file specified with --cookie is only used as input. No cookies are written 33 to the file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option. 34 35 If you use the Set-Cookie file format and do not specify a domain then the 36 cookie is not sent since the domain never matches. To address this, set a 37 domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that includes subdomains) or preferably: use 38 the Netscape format. 39 40 Users often want to both read cookies from a file and write updated cookies 41 back to a file, so using both --cookie and --cookie-jar in the same command 42 line is common. 43