Creating a lame utility HTTP server

In this recipe, we will discuss the cURL tool in Linux. The cURL tool is used for transferring the data from or to a server. It supports many protocols, and http is one of them. cURL is used to transfer the data from URL. It has so many tricks to offer, such as http post, ftp post, user authentication, proxy support, file transfer, SSL connections, cookies, and similar.

Getting ready

Besides having a Terminal open, you need to ensure that you have curl installed on your system.

How to do it…

We will learn about HTTP GET and POST methods using curl in Linux. Now, we will see examples of GET and POST:

1. GET: The HTTP GET method is used to request a data from a specified resource. The command is the example of HTTP GET and is accepting JSON formatted data:

$ curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "Accept:application/json" -X GET http://host/resource/name

Another example of HTTP GET, which is accepting XML formatted data is as follows:

$ curl -H "Content-Type:application...