curl and jq 8 Cheatsheet

Making requests

• Make a GET request — Fetch a URL and print the response body.
• Hide the progress meter — Suppress progress output but still show errors, which suits scripts.
• Fetch only the headers — Send a HEAD request and print the response headers.
• Follow redirects — Follow Location headers until the final response.
• POST JSON — Send a JSON body with the correct content type.
• POST a JSON file — Send the contents of a file as the request body.
• Use other HTTP methods — Choose the method with -X, here DELETE.
• Submit a form — Send URL-encoded form fields.
• URL-encode a value — Send a value that needs encoding, as a query string for a GET request.

Authentication and headers

• Send a bearer token — Authenticate with a token from an environment variable.
• Use basic authentication — Send a username, with curl prompting for the password.
• Set a header — Send any request header you need.
• Set the User-Agent — Send a custom User-Agent header.
• Save and send cookies — Store cookies in a file and send them on later requests.

Files and output

• Save to a file — Write the response body to a file.
• Save with the remote file name — Use the file name from the URL.
• Resume a download — Continue a partial download where it stopped.
• Upload a file — Upload a file as multipart form data.
• Print only the status code — Discard the body and print the HTTP status.
• Measure response time — Print how long the request took in seconds.

Debugging and reliability

• See the whole exchange — Print the request and response headers and TLS details.
• Fail on HTTP errors — Return a non-zero exit code on 4xx and 5xx responses, and print the body.
• Retry on failure — Retry up to five times on transient errors.
• Set a timeout — Give up if the whole operation takes longer than 10 seconds.
• Skip TLS certificate checks — Allow connections to servers with invalid certificates. Use it only to debug.
• Test a host before DNS changes — Send a request to a specific IP address while keeping the host name.

jq: filter and transform JSON

• Pretty-print JSON — Format JSON with indentation and colors.
• Get a field — Extract one field from an object.
• Get a field without quotes — Output raw strings instead of JSON strings, handy in scripts.
• Iterate over an array — Output each element of an array.
• Get a field from each element — Output the name of every user.
• Filter elements — Keep users older than 30.
• Count elements — Count the items in an array.
• List an object's keys — Output the keys of an object.
• Output compact JSON — Print each result on one line, which suits line-oriented tools.
• Build a new object — Create objects with only the fields you want.
• Sort by a field — Sort an array of objects by a field.
• Group by a field — Group array elements that share a value.
• Convert to CSV — Turn arrays of values into CSV rows.
• Pass a shell variable — Use a shell value inside a jq filter without quoting problems.

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