1 Long: form 2 Short: F 3 Arg: <name=content> 4 Help: Specify multipart MIME data 5 Protocols: HTTP SMTP IMAP 6 Mutexed: data head upload-file 7 Category: http upload 8 --- 9 For HTTP protocol family, this lets curl emulate a filled-in form in which a 10 user has pressed the submit button. This causes curl to POST data using the 11 Content-Type multipart/form-data according to RFC 2388. 12 13 For SMTP and IMAP protocols, this is the mean to compose a multipart mail 14 message to transmit. 15 16 This enables uploading of binary files etc. To force the 'content' part to be 17 a file, prefix the file name with an @ sign. To just get the content part from 18 a file, prefix the file name with the symbol <. The difference between @ and < 19 is then that @ makes a file get attached in the post as a file upload, while 20 the < makes a text field and just get the contents for that text field from a 21 file. 22 23 Tell curl to read content from stdin instead of a file by using - as 24 filename. This goes for both @ and < constructs. When stdin is used, the 25 contents is buffered in memory first by curl to determine its size and allow a 26 possible resend. Defining a part's data from a named non-regular file (such 27 as a named pipe or similar) is unfortunately not subject to buffering and will 28 be effectively read at transmission time; since the full size is unknown 29 before the transfer starts, such data is sent as chunks by HTTP and rejected 30 by IMAP. 31 32 Example: send an image to an HTTP server, where \&'profile' is the name of the 33 form-field to which the file portrait.jpg will be the input: 34 35 curl -F profile=@portrait.jpg https://example.com/upload.cgi 36 37 Example: send your name and shoe size in two text fields to the server: 38 39 curl -F name=John -F shoesize=11 https://example.com/ 40 41 Example: send your essay in a text field to the server. Send it as a plain 42 text field, but get the contents for it from a local file: 43 44 curl -F "story=<hugefile.txt" https://example.com/ 45 46 You can also tell curl what Content-Type to use by using 'type=', in a manner 47 similar to: 48 49 curl -F "web=@index.html;type=text/html" example.com 50 51 or 52 53 curl -F "name=daniel;type=text/foo" example.com 54 55 You can also explicitly change the name field of a file upload part by setting 56 filename=, like this: 57 58 curl -F "file=@localfile;filename=nameinpost" example.com 59 60 If filename/path contains ',' or ';', it must be quoted by double-quotes like: 61 62 curl -F "file=@\\"localfile\\";filename=\\"nameinpost\\"" example.com 63 64 or 65 66 curl -F 'file=@"localfile";filename="nameinpost"' example.com 67 68 Note that if a filename/path is quoted by double-quotes, any double-quote 69 or backslash within the filename must be escaped by backslash. 70 71 Quoting must also be applied to non-file data if it contains semicolons, 72 leading/trailing spaces or leading double quotes: 73 74 curl -F 'colors="red; green; blue";type=text/x-myapp' example.com 75 76 You can add custom headers to the field by setting headers=, like 77 78 curl -F "submit=OK;headers=\\"X-submit-type: OK\\"" example.com 79 80 or 81 82 curl -F "submit=OK;headers=@headerfile" example.com 83 84 The headers= keyword may appear more that once and above notes about quoting 85 apply. When headers are read from a file, Empty lines and lines starting 86 with '#' are comments and ignored; each header can be folded by splitting 87 between two words and starting the continuation line with a space; embedded 88 carriage-returns and trailing spaces are stripped. 89 Here is an example of a header file contents: 90 91 # This file contain two headers. 92 .br 93 X-header-1: this is a header 94 95 # The following header is folded. 96 .br 97 X-header-2: this is 98 .br 99 another header 100 101 102 To support sending multipart mail messages, the syntax is extended as follows: 103 .br 104 - name can be omitted: the equal sign is the first character of the argument, 105 .br 106 - if data starts with '(', this signals to start a new multipart: it can be 107 followed by a content type specification. 108 .br 109 - a multipart can be terminated with a '=)' argument. 110 111 Example: the following command sends an SMTP mime e-mail consisting in an 112 inline part in two alternative formats: plain text and HTML. It attaches a 113 text file: 114 115 curl -F '=(;type=multipart/alternative' \\ 116 .br 117 -F '=plain text message' \\ 118 .br 119 -F '= <body>HTML message</body>;type=text/html' \\ 120 .br 121 -F '=)' -F '=@textfile.txt' ... smtp://example.com 122 123 Data can be encoded for transfer using encoder=. Available encodings are 124 \fIbinary\fP and \fI8bit\fP that do nothing else than adding the corresponding 125 Content-Transfer-Encoding header, \fI7bit\fP that only rejects 8-bit characters 126 with a transfer error, \fIquoted-printable\fP and \fIbase64\fP that encodes 127 data according to the corresponding schemes, limiting lines length to 128 76 characters. 129 130 Example: send multipart mail with a quoted-printable text message and a 131 base64 attached file: 132 133 curl -F '=text message;encoder=quoted-printable' \\ 134 .br 135 -F '=@localfile;encoder=base64' ... smtp://example.com 136 137 See further examples and details in the MANUAL. 138 139 This option can be used multiple times. 140