Is it possible to use cURL to stream upload a file using POST?

Question

Or does PHP not allow this? I have read it is possible using PUT but the server is expecting POST only.

I believe that [pecl_http](http://pecl.php.net/package/pecl_http) is capable of doing something to that extent in the 2.x branch. — Ja͢ck, Apr 12 '13 at 10:28
Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3085990/post-a-file-string-using-curl-in-php — bwoebi, Apr 12 '13 at 10:40
The server need to accept this with the content type application/octet-stream. — Ross Logan, Apr 12 '13 at 11:19

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 09 '21 at 07:27

7

cURL has already support for streams, try curl --help | grep binary and you will get:

--data-binary DATA HTTP POST binary data (H)

An example:

curl -v -XPOST http://example:port/path --data-binary @file.tar
-H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream"

edited Aug 09 '21 at 07:27

svarog

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answered Jun 26 '15 at 02:12

hukeping

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The @file will load the content in memory. Bad for big file. Use the -T option instead. – Fred Simon Jul 02 '20 at 15:18

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 12 '13 at 18:36

Yes it is possible to stream upload a file using POST file uploads with cURL. This is the default and you need to provide the filename of the file(s) you would like to stream in form of strings.

// URL on which we have to post data
$url = "http://localhost/tutorials/post_action.php";
// Any other field you might want to catch
$post_data['name'] = "khan";
// File you want to upload/post
$post_data['file'] = "@c:/logs.log";

// Initialize cURL
$ch = curl_init();
// Set URL on which you want to post the Form and/or data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
// Data+Files to be posted
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
// Pass TRUE or 1 if you want to wait for and catch the response against the request made
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
// For Debug mode; shows up any error encountered during the operation
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
// Execute the request
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Just for debug: to see response
echo $response;

Apart from that default method, it is not possible to use cURL to stream upload a file using the POST method.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 26 '22 at 06:52

Command to upload a binary file

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8080/hello/read' \
-H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" \
--data-binary '@/Users/krishna/Documents/demo.bin'

command to upload a text file

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:8080/hello/read' \
--header 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
--data-binary '@/Users/krishna/Documents/demo.txt'

Set the Content-Type as per the file content.

Is it possible to use cURL to stream upload a file using POST?

3 Answers3

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