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CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS

Section: curl_easy_setopt options (3)
Updated: July 07, 2017
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NAME

CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS - specify data to POST to server

SYNOPSIS

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, char *postdata);

DESCRIPTION

Pass a char * as parameter, pointing to the full data to send in a HTTP POST operation. You must make sure that the data is formatted the way you want the server to receive it. libcurl will not convert or encode it for you in any way. For example, the web server may assume that this data is url-encoded.

The data pointed to is NOT copied by the library: as a consequence, it must be preserved by the calling application until the associated transfer finishes. This behaviour can be changed (so libcurl does copy the data) by setting the CURLOPT_COPYPOSTFIELDS(3) option.

This POST is a normal application/x-www-form-urlencoded kind (and libcurl will set that Content-Type by default when this option is used), which is commonly used by HTML forms. Change Content-Type with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3).

You can use curl_easy_escape(3) to url-encode your data, if necessary. It returns a pointer to an encoded string that can be passed as postdata.

Using CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3) implies CURLOPT_POST(3).

If CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3) is explicitly set to NULL then libcurl will get the POST data from the read callback. If you want to send a zero-byte POST set CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3) to an empty string, or set CURLOPT_POST(3) to 1 and CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE(3) to 0.

Using POST with HTTP 1.1 implies the use of a "Expect: 100-continue" header, and libcurl will add that header automatically if the POST is either known to be larger than 1024 bytes or if the expected size is unknown. You can disable this header with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3) as usual.

To make multipart/formdata posts (aka RFC2388-posts), check out the CURLOPT_HTTPPOST(3) option combined with curl_formadd(3).

DEFAULT

NULL

PROTOCOLS

HTTP

EXAMPLE

CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
  const char *data = "data to send";

  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://example.com");

  /* size of the POST data */
  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE, 12L);

  /* pass in a pointer to the data - libcurl will not copy */
  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, data);

  curl_easy_perform(curl);
}

AVAILABILITY

Always

RETURN VALUE

Returns CURLE_OK