CURLOPT_POST(3)

NAME
CURLOPT_POST - make an HTTP POST

SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h>

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_POST, long post);

DESCRIPTION
A parameter set to 1 tells libcurl to do a regular HTTP post. This also makes libcurl use a "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" header. This is the most commonly used POST method.

Use one of CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3) or CURLOPT_COPYPOSTFIELDS(3) options to specify what data to post and CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE(3) or CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE_LARGE(3) to set the data size.

Optionally, you can provide data to POST using the CURLOPT_READFUNCTION(3) and CURLOPT_READDATA(3) options but then you must make sure to not set CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3) to anything but NULL. When providing data with a callback, you must transmit it using chunked transfer-encoding or you must set the size of the data with the CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE(3) or CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE_LARGE(3) options. To enable chunked encoding, you simply pass in the appropriate Transfer-Encoding header, see the post-callback.c example.

You can override the default POST Content-Type: header by setting your own with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3).

Using POST with HTTP 1.1 implies the use of a "Expect: 100-continue" header. You can disable this header with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3) as usual.

If you use POST to an HTTP 1.1 server, you can send data without knowing the size before starting the POST if you use chunked encoding. You enable this by adding a header like "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3). With HTTP 1.0 or without chunked transfer, you must specify the size in the request. (Since 7.66.0, libcurl automatically uses chunked encoding for POSTs if the size is unknown.)

When setting CURLOPT_POST(3) to 1, libcurl automatically sets CURLOPT_NOBODY(3) and CURLOPT_HTTPGET(3) to 0.

If you issue a POST request and then want to make a HEAD or GET using the same reused handle, you must explicitly set the new request type using CURLOPT_NOBODY(3) or CURLOPT_HTTPGET(3) or similar.

When setting CURLOPT_POST(3) to 0, libcurl resets the request type to the default to disable the POST. Typically that means gets reset to GET. Instead you should set a new request type explicitly as described above.

DEFAULT
0, disabled

PROTOCOLS
HTTP

EXAMPLE
int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode res;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1L);

    /* set up the read callback with CURLOPT_READFUNCTION */

    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

AVAILABILITY
Along with HTTP

RETURN VALUE
Returns CURLE_OK if HTTP is supported, and CURLE_UNKNOWN_OPTION if not.

SEE ALSO
CURLOPT_HTTPPOST(3), CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS(3), CURLOPT_PUT(3)