//: # ()
Have a curl command you need turned into real code right now? Use our free cURL to Code Converter — paste it and get working JavaScript, Python, PHP, or Go, instantly in your browser.
Almost every API's documentation shows a curl example, because curl is the universal, copy-pasteable way to demonstrate an HTTP request without assuming any particular programming language. Browser DevTools follow the same convention — right-click any request in the Network tab, "Copy as cURL," and you get a runnable command that reproduces exactly what the browser sent, headers and all.
The problem: you rarely want to run curl itself in production. You want that same request expressed as code, in whatever language your app is written in — and translating flags by hand is repetitive and easy to get subtly wrong (especially escaping quotes inside a JSON body).
curl -X POST https://api.example.com/v1/users \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
-d '{"name":"Ada Lovelace","role":"admin"}'Breaking down the flags that matter most:
| Flag | Meaning |
|---|---|
-X, --request |
HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, ...). If omitted, curl uses GET, or POST automatically if -d is present. |
-H, --header |
Adds one request header. Repeatable — one -H per header. |
-d, --data, --data-raw |
Request body. Using -d also implies POST if no -X was given. |
-u, --user |
HTTP Basic Auth credentials (user:pass), sent as a base64-encoded Authorization header. |
-b, --cookie |
Sends a Cookie header. |
-A, --user-agent |
Sets the User-Agent header. |
-G, --get |
Forces GET and turns any -d data into query string parameters instead of a body. |
The trailing \ at the end of each line is just a shell line-continuation — it means "this is still one command," which is why pasted multi-line curl commands (like the ones DevTools generates) need that continuation stripped before tokenizing, if you're writing your own parser.
A few things that trip people up when hand-converting:
Content-Type: application/json header means the body should be sent as-is (already JSON text). Forgetting to set it — or a library auto-setting a different one — is the most common cause of "works in curl, fails in code."" characters. When that same string becomes a language string literal (a JS/Python/Go double-quoted string, or a PHP string), every embedded " needs re-escaping for that language's syntax — and PHP double-quoted strings additionally interpret $ as variable interpolation, which will silently corrupt a JSON body containing a $ (like an OData query with $filter=) unless you either escape it or use PHP single quotes instead.curl -d '...' https://... with no -X sends a POST — a detail that's easy to drop when translating by hand into a client library that defaults to GET.Paste any curl command — including the multi-line kind copied straight from browser DevTools — into the cURL to Code Converter and get correctly escaped, working request code in JavaScript, Python, PHP, or Go.