CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE(3)

CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE3

Size of post data pointed to

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE, long size);

Overview

Set the size of the data buffer to POST to prevent libcurl from doing a strlen() to figure out the data size. When this option is used you can post fully binary data, which otherwise is likely to fail. If this size is set to -1, libcurl uses strlen() to get the size or relies on the CURLOPT_READFUNCTION(3) (if used) to signal the end of data.

You must make sure that the set size is not larger than the provided buffer.

If you post more than 2GB, use CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE_LARGE(3).

Default

-1

Protocols

This functionality affects http, mqtt and rtsp

Examples

#include <string.h> /* for strlen */
int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    static const char *data = "data to send";
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com");
    /* size of the POST data */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDSIZE, (long)strlen(data));
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, data);
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

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).

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

Availability

Added in curl 7.2

From curl 8.23.0-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.