CURLOPT_PRIVATE(3)

CURLOPT_PRIVATE3

Store a private pointer

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_PRIVATE, void *pointer);

Overview

Pass a void * as parameter, pointing to data that should be associated with this curl handle. The pointer can subsequently be retrieved using curl_easy_getinfo(3) with the CURLINFO_PRIVATE(3) option. libcurl itself never does anything with this data.

Default

NULL

Protocols

This functionality affects all supported protocols

Examples

struct private_data {
  void *custom;
};
int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  struct private_data secrets;
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    struct private_data *extracted;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com");
    /* store a pointer to our private_data struct */
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_PRIVATE, &secrets);
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    /* we can extract the private_data pointer again too */
    curl_easy_getinfo(curl, CURLINFO_PRIVATE, &extracted);
    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 7.10.3

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