Using cURL with a username and password?

Solution 1:

Use the -u flag to include a username, and curl will prompt for a password:

curl -u username http://example.com

You can also include the password in the command, but then your password will be visible in bash history:

curl -u username:password http://example.com

Solution 2:

It is safer to do:

curl --netrc-file my-password-file http://example.com

...as passing a plain user/password string on the command line, is a bad idea.

The format of the password file is (as per man curl):

machine <example.com> login <username> password <password>

Note:

1. Machine name must not include https:// or similar! Just the hostname.
2. The words 'machine', 'login', and 'password' are just keywords; the actual information is the stuff after those keywords.

Solution 3:

Or the same thing but different syntax

curl http://username:[email protected]/test/blah?something=123

Solution 4:

You can also just send the user name by writing:

curl -u USERNAME http://server.example

Curl will then ask you for the password, and the password will not be visible on the screen (or if you need to copy/paste the command).

Solution 5:

To securely pass the password in a script (i.e. prevent it from showing up with ps auxf or logs) you can do it with the -K- flag (read config from stdin) and a heredoc:

curl --url url -K- <<< "--user user:password"