c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, daniel@haxx.se, et al. SPDX-License-Identifier: curl Short: b Long: cookie Arg: <data|filename> Protocols: HTTP Help: Send cookies from string/load from file Category: http Added: 4.9 Multi: append See-also:
--cookiePass the data to the HTTP server in the Cookie header. It is supposedly the data previously received from the server in a Set-Cookie: line. The data should be in the format NAME1=VALUE1; NAME2=VALUE2 or as a single filename.
When given a set of specific cookies and not a filename, it makes curl use the cookie header with this content explicitly in all outgoing request(s). If multiple requests are done due to authentication, followed redirects or similar, they all get this cookie header passed on.
If no = symbol is used in the argument, it is instead treated as a filename to read previously stored cookie from. This option also activates the cookie engine which makes curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if you are using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL transfers on the same invoke.
If the filename is a single minus (“-”), curl reads the contents from stdin. If the filename is an empty string ("") and is the only cookie input, curl activates the cookie engine without any cookies.
The file format of the file to read cookies from should be plain HTTP headers (Set-Cookie style) or the Netscape/Mozilla cookie file format.
The file specified with --cookie is only used as input. No cookies are written to that file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option.
If you use the Set-Cookie file format and do not specify a domain then the cookie is not sent since the domain never matches. To address this, set a domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that includes subdomains) or preferably: use the Netscape format.
Users often want to both read cookies from a file and write updated cookies back to a file, so using both --cookie and --cookie-jar in the same command line is common.
If curl is built with PSL (Public Suffix List) support, it detects and discards cookies that are specified for such suffix domains that should not be allowed to have cookies. If curl is not built with PSL support, it has no ability to stop super cookies.