Tribblix: manual page: CURLOPT

CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3) Introduction to Library Functions

NAME

CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE - filename 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 filename 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.

By passing the empty string ("") to this option, you enable the
cookie engine without reading any initial cookies. If you tell
libcurl the filename is "-" (just a single minus sign), libcurl
instead reads from stdin.

This option only reads cookies. To make libcurl write cookies to
file, see CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3).

If you read cookies from a plain HTTP headers file and it does not
specify a domain in the Set-Cookie line, then the cookie is not sent
since the cookie domain cannot match the target URL's. To address
this, set a domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that includes
subdomains) or preferably: use the Netscape format.

The application does not have to keep the string around after setting
this option.

If you use this option multiple times, you add more files to read
cookies from. Setting this option to NULL disables the cookie engine
and clears the list of files to read cookies from.

SECURITY CONCERNS

This document previously mentioned how specifying a non-existing file
can also enable the cookie engine. While true, we strongly advise
against using that method as it is too hard to be sure that files
that stay that way in the long run.

DEFAULT

NULL

PROTOCOLS

This functionality affects http only

EXAMPLE

int main(void)
{
CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
CURLcode res;
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");

res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
}
}

Cookie file format
The cookie file format and general cookie concepts in curl are
described online here: https://curl.se/docs/http-cookies.html

AVAILABILITY

Added in curl 7.1

RETURN VALUE

curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error
occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).