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.
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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@curbstickle@anarchist.nexus like Facebook is a server while the app on my mobile is a client ?
Yes, facebook is running on a web server and the app (or a browser) is a client.
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.
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.
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de exactly.... I wish to avoid browsers and GUIs as far as I can.... So this tickled my curiosity........
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.
@asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev but I can fetch the web through the terminal emulator ??
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de
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.
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
It’s an open source project that is like a Swiss Army knife for, primarily http/https, connections.
I use it daily for scripting, monitoring and automation.
@porn_was_never_the_real_issue@lemmynsfw.com l often come across this phrase, Swiss Army knife..... What does it mean actually ??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife
A swiss army knife is a single tool that contains a number of other smaller tools that you can use in many different circumstances.
Curl is a metaphorical "swiss army knife" for connecting to computers. There are many protocols to connect to different kinds of computers running different kinds of software and curl allows one to easily connect to many of them.
@borf@lemmynsfw.com thanks. I really need to understand what protocols actually are.
Think of a protocol like a language; if you just blurt out sounds no one will understands, but if you make sounds that correspond to an already agreed upon meaning, it becomes communications.
The same thing is true for sending 1s and 0s; they are meaningless unless the other end understands them and a protocol is "the agreement" both ends use to communicate.
@borf@lemmynsfw.com thanks 😊 😊 😊
Why?
A protocol is like a language. It just lets two computers know how to talk to each other. That's it.
@borf@lemmynsfw.com wow.... But l'm on my android phone........
Wikipedia works on phones. I'm on an Android phone. Why do you keep pinging that person? This looks like harassment/trolling.
Edit: are you confused because I said "computers?" Your phone is a computer.
Different federated platforms talking to each other will look like this sometimes. In this case it's a microblogging platform talking to a threaded conversation platform. It's just a quirk of federation in general.
Well, that's horrifying -.-
@confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com probably an example regarding how curl works ??🤓🤓🤓
@porn_was_never_the_real_issue@lemmynsfw.com @borf@lemmynsfw.com
curl https://google.com/
If you run this, you will see the HTML for google.com printed to your screen.
I don't have much experience with curl. From what I understand, it's an old but constantly maintained command line tool. If you type curl https://www.google.com/ in your terminal of choice, you should get a text display in return of google's search page. That's if the curl command is installed on your system, which it most likely would be.
You won't be able to interact with it since it's in text but you can see how the page has been written in the HTML language before it gets rendered into the website you would normally see in a web browser.
When it comes to terminal commands, I find it helpful to do web searches using linux <command name>. For example linux curl and that will lead me to many sites that help explain the command and give multiple examples of how to use the command.
Once you get more experienced with using a terminal, using the command options --help or -h will give you information that could help you use the command. For example curl --help
There's also manual pages, or man pages that give a more technical look at commands within your terminal of choice. You can access them with man <command name>. Example: man curl.
In the case of federation, every platform that is using federation is using a communication protocol called ActivityPub. Simplified, it functions like email but instead of private emails, it's transferring public social media content. Microbloggers and threaded conversations can communicate with each other using ActivityPub but the information exchanged between the two platforms is slightly different. That's how we get quirks like this when two different ActivityPub platforms communicate with each other.
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OP seems like an LMM
damn, people here are too kind. literally explaining everything op asks when it can literally be searched on wikipedia lmao...
Large… Mob Machine
@borf@lemmynsfw.com I'm sorry..... I'm on brainbin, and l'm yet to get familiar with how it works......
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?
OP, please tell me more about your situation. What made you curious about this?
@borf@lemmynsfw.com tell me one thing.... Do you use the terminal on your mobile phone ??
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.
@borf@lemmynsfw.com l just saw that it runs on cli, and l was wondering if it can be used as a terminal emulator.
Curl is not a terminal emulator. Unless you provide a better reason I am now assuming you are a troll.
Not a troll. Just a kid trying to figure out how to browse the web with a terminal.
This is a basic https://xyproblem.info/
I thought maybe an XY problem at first but the refusal to do any research on one's own or to reply to my repeated requests to know what they were really trying to do made me block them as posting in bad faith.
@48954246@lemmy.world well, l am a kid when it comes to computers and technology........
@borf@lemmynsfw.com
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@borf@lemmynsfw.com l'm not a troll. I discovered it in Codeberg, and it raised my curiosity. Probably l don't have any use for it at this point of time.
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.
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