• CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
    5·
    23 hours ago

    command line tool and library for transferring data with URLs (since 1998)

    Have you even tried to open the very link you posted and read the first line???

  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    15·
    1 day ago

    curl stands for client URL, and you use it to talk to a server (URL) in whatever protocol you specify. Its used for development as a way to test client & server communication, built into applications to perform communication between a client & a server, and its used often because its extremely portable, has great error logging, can be rate limited, and can provide a substantial amount of detail about the communication.

      • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        Yes, though really its a lot of servers.

        I wouldn’t worry about tools yet, I’d recommend getting a book/wiki on networking if you’d like to learn, its knowledge that builds.

  • Björn@swg-empire.de
    8·
    1 day ago

    It’s a program to download stuff from the web. It is very flexible. You can tell it to use cookies, post form data, upload and download files. It can do basically everything a web browser does without a graphical user interface.

    It is built into many software pieces. And developers love it to test stuff.

      • asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev
        12·
        1 day ago

        Believe me, you aren’t going to get used to nor enjoy “browsing” the web with curl. It’s not what you think it is.

          • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
            10·
            1 day ago

            For that I would rather recommend a terminal browser like lynx, w3m or links2 in example. curl is more like a single web request to download one piece of raw file (an html page or an image in example). It is not meant to interpret websites and display results. If you want save webpages for offline view, then something like wget.

          • 48954246@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            1 day ago

            The modern internet isn’t designed to be interacted with via a terminal.

            So much of the internet today runs on JavaScript and curl won’t run that

    • TheracAriane@thebrainbin.orgOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      @porn_was_never_the_real_issue@lemmynsfw.com l often come across this phrase, Swiss Army knife… What does it mean actually ??

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        hypertext transfer protocol and hypertext transfer protocol secure. it’s the basic network protocol of the modern internet. hypertext can be thought of as being html (hypertext markup language) though other hypertext specifications do exist. hypertext just means documents with links to other documents.

        you know how when you copy a url (universal resource location) from your web browser it always has http or https at the start of it? that’s because your web browser is connecting to an external server somewhere via the hypertext transfer protocol.

        cURL can connext to nearly any server via nearly any standard protocol. it’s commonly used for validating connection information and downloading files

      • spacelick@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        It’s the protocol most computers use to show websites. In an internet address like https://google.com/, the https:// is the protocol. Different protocols have different features and purposes, but http/https are some of the most common.

        • TheracAriane@thebrainbin.orgOP
          1·
          1 day ago

          @borf@lemmynsfw.com l need to explore this a lot more. Can you give me some more leads on this ?

          @porn_was_never_the_real_issue@lemmynsfw.com

          • spacelick@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            First, tell me why you need to know. And please stop pinging that person, it’s really rude to ping someone so many times when not responding to them.

            • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              they’re not on the threadiverse, they’re on mastodon where the threading works differently. their software is doing that automatically

                • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
                  1·
                  1 day ago

                  🤷 it’s kind of just a function of thah activity pub is loosy goosy about how and what to do with it. end of the day it’s the threadiverse that’s weird and we need to just kind of accept these lumps until lemmy/piefed/mbin devs and mastodon/misskey/whatever devs all get on an issue and decide how best to do this

  • dajoho@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    24 hours ago

    Curl is very low level. It will let you download things but won’t display it to you in any really useful way. It is intended to be used by other applications.

    If you’re looking to use it to browse websites using the terminal, you need something that uses curl in the background but displays anything you download to you in a sensible way. Two such applications are lynx and links2. These will run in your terminal.

    However you may not have much fun browsing facebook or anything modern. A lot of websites require javascript, which lynx or links2 will have trouble understanding.

    • spacelick@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I still don’t understand why you won’t explain why you “need” to learn about curl.

      You don’t need to know anything at all about curl unless you’re working on a technical project, and no offense, I don’t think you are.

      Why do you ““need”” to know about curl?

      • spacelick@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Not these days.

        Curl isn’t just a command line tool, it is also a “library” which other computer software uses. Everyone’s phone uses curl under the hood. Almost every electronic device that connects to something remote uses curl under the hood.

        I still don’t understand what you’re trying to do.