POST with curl without sending data

Question

Is there a way to use curl to send a POST request without sending any data?

We usually post like:

curl --data @C:\mydata.txt http://1.2.3.4/myapi

If you omit the --data you are doing a GET. How can you omit it and still do a POST?

Warning, on Microsoft Windows, curl does not seem to work correctly under Power Shell, but does seem to work correctly under Command Prompt. — Eric Kolotyluk, Apr 30 '18 at 20:12

score 96 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

96

Randomly found the solution on another post:

curl -X POST http://example.com

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

answered May 27 '10 at 20:33

Marcus Leon

Nice. I'm in this situation as well, but it feels a bit odd. I'm wondering if it would be more appropriate to change the call to a GET. I know this is a few years old by now, but any thoughts on that? – Kyle Clegg Jan 07 '14 at 19:27
26

In my case I had to use --data "" otherwise I would get a 411: curl -X POST --data "" url – unify Feb 12 '14 at 19:51
11

@KyleClegg The call should be a POST if it is designed to change something, and might give a different result every time it is called. Not sending data does not mean it won't change something. So in that case it would not be appropriate to change the call into a GET. – Michael L Mar 26 '15 at 01:07

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 12 '17 at 09:50

16

Another option is sending a request with empty body, like so:

curl http://example.com -d {}

answered Sep 12 '17 at 09:50

Afshin Mehrabani

hemp · Answer 3 · 2010-05-21T22:55:46.437

3

This is a bit of a hack, but you could always provide an empty --data file.

Alternately

cat /dev/null | curl --data @- http://...

edited May 21 '10 at 22:55

answered May 21 '10 at 20:16

hemp

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 11 '15 at 16:22

1

In case of libcurl with PHP:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'POST');

answered Sep 11 '15 at 16:22

dog

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited May 03 '19 at 11:21

1

If you need to be authenticated then below is the command:

curl -X POST -u username:password http://example.com

edited May 03 '19 at 11:21

Suraj Rao

answered May 03 '19 at 11:20

Kelvin Murumba

5 Answers5