Ubuntu: Installing cURL? What is cURL?

How to install cURL on your Ubuntu Linux machine:

sudo apt-get install curl

So, what is cURL anyway?

In it's simplest use, you can retrieve data files over the web using URL-style communications.

This includes the HTML code from any web page.

curl www.ExampleWebPageSite.com

But it does much more than that. It will transfer and save files. It can also make requests using a username and password. cURL can communicate through FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, TELNET, and other protocols.

One example use is PayPal's API -- thousands of people are performing web-based credit transactions right now using cURL to query PayPal. Data is transmitted securely using cURL.

For more information, you can visit the cURL website.

http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/https.html

If you have curl installed on a Linux system, you can type:

curl --help