CURLOPT_USERPWD(3)

CURLOPT_USERPWD3

User name and password to use in authentication

Usage

#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, char *userpwd);

Overview

Pass a char pointer as parameter, pointing to a null-terminated login details string for the connection. The format of which is: [user name]:[password].

When using Kerberos V5 authentication with a Windows based server, you should specify the user name part with the domain name in order for the server to successfully obtain a Kerberos Ticket. If you do not then the initial part of the authentication handshake may fail.

When using NTLM, the user name can be specified simply as the user name without the domain name should the server be part of a single domain and forest.

To specify the domain name use either Down-Level Logon Name or UPN (User Principal Name) formats. For example EXAMPLEser and [email protected] respectively.

Some HTTP servers (on Windows) support inclusion of the domain for Basic authentication as well.

When using HTTP and CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION(3), libcurl might perform several requests to possibly different hosts. libcurl only sends this user and password information to hosts using the initial hostname (unless CURLOPT_UNRESTRICTED_AUTH(3) is set), so if libcurl follows redirects to other hosts, it does not send the user and password to those. This is enforced to prevent accidental information leakage.

Use CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH(3) to specify the authentication method for HTTP based connections or CURLOPT_LOGIN_OPTIONS(3) to control IMAP, POP3 and SMTP options.

The user and password strings are not URL decoded, so there is no way to send in a user name containing a colon using this option. Use CURLOPT_USERNAME(3) for that, or include it in the URL.

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

Default

NULL

Protocols

Most

Examples

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode res;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "clark:kent");
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

Return value

Returns CURLE_OK on success or CURLE_OUT_OF_MEMORY if there was insufficient heap space.

Releases

79 releases since OS X 10.10; the text changed 14 times.

  1. 10.10–10.10.4
  2. 10.10.5–10.11.6
  3. 10.12–10.12.5
  4. 10.12.6–10.14.6
  5. 10.15–11.5
  6. 12.0.1–12.2
  7. 12.3–12.5
  8. 13.0
  9. 13.1
  10. 13.2
  11. 13.3
  12. 13.4
  13. 13.5–14.1
  14. 14.2–14.4
  15. 14.5–26.5

Availability

Always

From curl 166.0.0.0.1 in macOS 26.5. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.