On 4/26/2019 9:37 AM, Mie Lambert wrote:
>
> Can I use CURL as if I was using Chrome … enter a URL, Enter Data or
> Tick Boxes, Wait for the return screen and then scrape it ??
>
> I have been reading the CURL e-mails … I seem to be only using 1% of
> this marvellous tool. Is there a summary of what CURL can actually do
> .. without having to read the manual and try to decipher the parameters ?
>
I agree, the man page for the curl tool can look overwhelming but it is
pretty good reference.  There are also some tutorials for first time
users.  I'd suggest starting with a simple project like using curl to
transfer a file and then use the tutorials & man page documentation to
figure out how to do it.  (See the documentation pull down list on the
main curl web page at https://curl.haxx.se/)

I used curl in shell scripts to transfer files from one machine to
another.  I was able to check for lots of error conditions and verify
whether the transfers were working or not and have the script take
action if they failed.  I was using mostly ftp or sftp in my scripts.

As to your question about it's similarities to using Chrome - yes, the
idea you were thinking of is doable with curl but ... I found that HTTP
scripting is more difficult to do given things like cookies that are not
obvious to a casual user but are important to the interaction with the
web server.  The documentation section of the curl web site has a page
dedicated to HTTP scripting that goes into some of the details of how to
work with HTTP servers.

Jim Young

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Received on 2019-04-26