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