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