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CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3) curl_easy_setopt options CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3)
NAME
CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE - file name to read cookies from
SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, char
*filename);
DESCRIPTION
Pass a pointer to a null-terminated string as parameter. It should
point to the file name of your file holding cookie data to read. The
cookie data can be in either the old Netscape / Mozilla cookie data
format or just regular HTTP headers (Set-Cookie style) dumped to a
file.
It also enables the cookie engine, making libcurl parse and send
cookies on subsequent requests with this handle.
Given an empty or non-existing file or by passing the empty string ("")
to this option, you can enable the cookie engine without reading any
initial cookies. If you tell libcurl the file name is "-" (just a
single minus sign), libcurl will instead read from stdin.
This option only reads cookies. To make libcurl write cookies to file,
see CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3).
Exercise caution if you are using this option and multiple transfers
may occur. If you 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 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 you use this option multiple times, you just add more files to read.
Subsequent files will add more cookies.
The application does not have to keep the string around after setting
this option.
DEFAULT
NULL
PROTOCOLS
HTTP
EXAMPLE
CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");
/* get cookies from an existing file */
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "/tmp/cookies.txt");
ret = curl_easy_perform(curl);
curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
}
Cookie file format
The cookie file format and general cookie concepts in curl are
described in the HTTP-COOKIES.md file, also hosted online here:
https://curl.haxx.se/docs/http-cookies.html
AVAILABILITY
As long as HTTP is supported
RETURN VALUE
Returns CURLE_OK if HTTP is supported, and CURLE_UNKNOWN_OPTION if not.
SEE ALSO
CURLOPT_COOKIE(3), CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3),
libcurl 7.73.0 September 16, 2020 CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3)