1--- 2c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. 3SPDX-License-Identifier: curl 4Short: b 5Long: cookie 6Arg: <data|filename> 7Protocols: HTTP 8Help: Send cookies from string/file 9Category: http 10Added: 4.9 11Multi: append 12See-also: 13 - cookie-jar 14 - junk-session-cookies 15Example: 16 - -b "" $URL 17 - -b cookiefile $URL 18 - -b cookiefile -c cookiefile $URL 19--- 20 21# `--cookie` 22 23Pass the data to the HTTP server in the Cookie header. It is supposedly the 24data previously received from the server in a "Set-Cookie:" line. The data 25should be in the format "NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2". This makes curl use the 26cookie header with this content explicitly in all outgoing request(s). If 27multiple requests are done due to authentication, followed redirects or 28similar, they all get this cookie passed on. 29 30If no '=' symbol is used in the argument, it is instead treated as a filename 31to read previously stored cookie from. This option also activates the cookie 32engine which makes curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if you are 33using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL 34transfers on the same invoke. 35 36If the file name is exactly a minus ("-"), curl instead reads the contents from 37stdin. If the file name is an empty string ("") and is the only cookie input, 38curl will activate the cookie engine without any cookies. 39 40The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers 41(Set-Cookie style) or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format. 42 43The file specified with --cookie is only used as input. No cookies are written 44to the file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option. 45 46If you use the Set-Cookie file format and do not specify a domain then the 47cookie is not sent since the domain never matches. To address this, set a 48domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that includes subdomains) or preferably: use 49the Netscape format. 50 51Users often want to both read cookies from a file and write updated cookies 52back to a file, so using both --cookie and --cookie-jar in the same command 53line is common. 54 55If curl is built with PSL (**Public Suffix List**) support, it detects and 56discards cookies that are specified for such suffix domains that should not be 57allowed to have cookies. If curl is *not* built with PSL support, it has no 58ability to stop super cookies. 59