December 27, 2015
Stop and smell the coding roses.
The full post title should really read: CURL: A Reminder to Look Stuff Up (Even if It’s Not Directly Pertinent to Your Immediate Objective).
I recently started a new job and was setting up my development environment on my new computer. I found myself using the curl command often to install various programs.
Side note: this post could also be titled The Benefits of a Calm and Organized Work Environment.
I took a moment to stop and read a little about exactly what the curl command did to refresh my memory (having briefly visited the topic when examining APIs in an earlier post).
Long story short, the curl command acts as a client sending an HTTP request that contains a method (like GET, POST, HEAD, etc.) to a server to retrieve info.
So, for example, when you type curl http://curl.haxx.se into your command line, you will get all of the HTML for that particular page show up in your terminal.
Equally important, in my searches I came across a really great page providing for not only background info on curl but on HTTP scripting as well. A ton of great reading can be found on the curl.haxx.se site including: