Hello, how are you? Today we are going to talk about cURL. This is a library of functions to connect to servers to work with them. The work is done in URL format. That is to say, it is used to perform actions on files in Internet URLs, supporting the most common protocols, such as http, ftp, https, etc. Moreover, is a software project consisting of a library (libcurl) and a command interpreter (curl) oriented file transfer. Its primary use is to automate unsupervised file transfers or sequences of operations. In addition, it integrates with PHP, so its libraries can also be used from PHP scripts. The only requirement is that PHP must be installed with cURL support. Consequently, in this post, we are going to see how to install cURL in Windows.
Download cURL for Windows.
The first thing we have to do is go to this website and download the corresponding version.
Then unzip it at the root of the Windows installation. Also, for ease of use assign a simple name to the folder. In my case, I chose curl:
Testing the installation.
The first thing you have to do is open a Command Prompt. With this intention press the Win+R combination and run cmd. Then navigate to the folder you unzipped by typing the following commands:
cd.. cd.. cd curl
To test the cURL installation please run the following command:
curl -V
Now let’s try a popular site, like google. With this in mind, please run the following command:
curl https://www.google.com
Adding the environment variable.
To be able to run curl, it is necessary to go to the program directory and from there run the commands. If we want to avoid this, it is necessary to edit the environment variables. In addition, add a new variable to the PATH environment. If you want to know how to do it, please see here. In this case, I only show you that the path you have to add is C:\curl
From now on we can run cURL from any Command Prompt. It is no longer necessary to scroll to the installation address.
In conclusion, we have seen how to install cURL on Windows. From now on you can use it to test HTTP requests. Also, as a programmer it is possible to use all the advantages it offers. All right, that’s it for now. Greetings!
