Introduction
The user agent is a string of text that is sent by a web browser to a web server to identify itself. It is used to help the server identify the type of browser and operating system that is being used to access the website. If you are using curl to access a website, you may need to set or change the user agent to ensure that the server is able to identify the type of browser and operating system that you are using. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to set or change the user agent with curl.
How to Set or Change User Agent with curl
1. To set or change the user agent with curl, use the -A or –user-agent option.
2. For example, to set the user agent to “MyUserAgent”, use the following command:
curl -A “MyUserAgent”
3. To view the current user agent, use the -v or –verbose option.
4. For example, to view the current user agent, use the following command:
curl -v
Introduction
A User-Agent (UA) string is information included in the HTTP header, acting on behalf of a user. When you connect to a website from a browser, the UA informs the website from which browser the request is coming from, its version number and operating system.
A server may respond differently to specific user agents. Therefore, you might find yourself needing to change the UA string.
In this tutorial, learn how to set or change the user agent with curl.
Curl User Agent
When you use curl to send a HTTP request, it sends the user agent information in the “curl/version.number” format.
The latest stable version at the time of writing is 7.72. 0. Therefore, the UA string in the HTTP request would be: “curl/7.72.0″.
There are several ways to set or change the user agent with the curl command.
Change User Agent with curl
To change the curl user agent to a different browser, add the -A option with the wanted user agent string:
curl -A "user-agent-name-here" [URL]To send a request to the webpage example.com by emulating the Firefox 81 user agent, you would run:
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0" https://example.com/"You can also use the --user-agent option with the following command syntax:
curl --user-agent "user-agent-name-here" urlAlternatively, run the command line option -H that takes a single parameter of an extra header to include in the curl request:
curl -H "User-Agent: user-Agent-Name-Here"Conclusion
You should now know how to change the user agent with curl and set it to the wanted browser. Doing so allows you to overpass possible blocks or content changes that may appear due to using curl.
Don’t miss out on our other curl guides such as how to send a delete request with curl.
How to Set or Change User Agent with curl
The user agent is a string of text that is sent along with HTTP requests to identify the application, operating system, vendor, and/or version of the requesting user agent.
curl is a command-line tool for transferring data with URL syntax. It supports a wide range of protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP and more. It also supports a variety of user agents.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to set or change the user agent of curl.
Setting the User Agent with curl
To set the user agent of curl, use the -A or –user-agent option. The following example sets the user agent to “Mozilla/5.0”:
curl -A "Mozilla/5.0" https://example.com
You can also set the user agent to a custom string. For example:
curl -A "My Custom User Agent" https://example.com
Changing the User Agent with curl
To change the user agent of curl, use the -A or –user-agent option with the -H or –header option. The following example changes the user agent to “Mozilla/5.0”:
curl -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0" https://example.com
You can also change the user agent to a custom string. For example:
curl -H "User-Agent: My Custom User Agent" https://example.com
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we have shown you how to set or change the user agent of curl. We hope you have found this tutorial helpful.
