The command line tool cURL, which stands for client URL, is used by developers to transport data to and from a server. At its most basic level, cURL allows you to communicate with a server by defining the destination (in the form of a URL) and the data you wish to transmit. cURL operates on practically every platform and supports a variety of protocols, including HTTP and HTTPS. This makes cURL suitable for testing communication from a local server to most edge devices from practically any device (as long as it has a command line and network connectivity).
Curl’s most fundamental command is curl http://example.com. The URL from which we would like to retrieve data is followed by the curl command. It would return the html source for example.com in this situation.
Sending API requests
To send API requests, we can use curl. Each request is made up of four key components:
- An endpoint, which is the address (URL) to which we are sending the request.
- An HTTP method. GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE are the most commonly used methods.
- GET is used to retrieve a resource from a server. This could be a file, information, or an image.
- POST is used to send information to the server.
- PUT can be used to create or update a resource. This could be used to create or update a record in a database or update the contents of a file.
- DELETE is used to delete a resource such as a database entry.
- These actions for these methods are the recommended actions, but it’s up to the API specification and implementation to define what exactly happens.
- Headers, which contain metadata about the request, such as the content type and user agent.
- Body, which is the message body and contains the data that we want to convey Generally, the body is typically used with POST and PUT operations.
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