| Short: b |
| Long: cookie |
| Arg: <data|filename> |
| Protocols: HTTP |
| Help: Send cookies from string/file |
| --- |
| Pass 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". |
| |
| 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 will make curl record incoming cookies, which may be handy if |
| you're using this in combination with the --location option or do multiple URL |
| transfers on the same invoke. If the file name is exactly a minus ("-"), curl |
| will instead read the contents from stdin. |
| |
| 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 will be |
| written to the file. To store cookies, use the --cookie-jar option. |
| |
| Exercise caution if you are using this option and multiple transfers may |
| occur. If you use the NAME1=VALUE1; format, or in a file use the Set-Cookie |
| format and don't specify a domain, then the cookie is sent for any domain |
| (even after redirects are followed) and cannot be modified by a server-set |
| cookie. If the cookie engine is enabled and a server sets a cookie of the same |
| name then both will be sent on a future transfer to that server, likely not |
| what you intended. To address these issues set a domain in Set-Cookie (doing |
| that will include sub domains) or use the Netscape format. |
| |
| If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. |
| |
| Users very 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. |
