In this blog, we’ll cover:
- What is a server and why we need to talk to it ?
- What is cURL (in very simple terms)
- Why programmers need cURL
- Making your first request using cURL
- Understanding request and response using cURL to talk to APIs
- Common mistakes beginners make with cURL
Server
Think of a server your friend
You request some money from your friend
If your friend has good mood and has money , you get a response "Sure"
Otherwise says "NO"
A server works the same .
👉 A server is a hardware or software that process your request send over a network and in return server will give response to you .
If you want to know more about what the network is i strongly recommend you the read this blog 👇
Understanding Network Devices: What Every IT Student Should Know 👨🎓
Kunal ・ Jan 21
But why we need to talk to a Server
A server is important becouse :
You get the data
Send data
Update data
Remove data
You dont able to upload a photo on a Social media if you dont want to talk with a server
cURL : Client URL
cURL short for "Client URL" is a command line tool (ping , ipconfig) used to transfer and download data to a specific server by specifying the location ( in the form of URL ) .
It requires only command line interface (CLI) such as powershell, cmd and Warp to run .
Why they are widely used by programmers
They are widely used by programmers as :
They perform a quick HTTP request to a server .
It can perform GET , POST and other HTTP request .
It is mostly used by backend developers for testing the API .3
Practical examples of cURL
To use cURL you have a command line interface ( CLI ) in your device such
powershell , cmd and Warp
Here are some few cURL commands thar every developer should know .
Fetching a website
This command will return the HTML of a website
curl google.com
Sending GET requests
The most common form of HTTP request is GET request . It is used to when we want to retrieve data from the server
curl https://dummyjson.com/products
Check the content part you get all the list of products
Sending POST requests
Another frequent used HTTP is POST , which is used to send or update the data of server
curl.exe -X POST https://httpbin.org/anything
Common mistakes beginners make with cURL
Writing the URL without quotes
Ignoring the response status code
Sending invalid JSON format
Forgetting the cURL commands
Thanks for reading ! if enjoyed this blog , you can read more on this 👇



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