How to Run Curl Command in PowerShell

Windows operating system supports a number of command-line tools that can be very useful in automation. curl is one of these useful tools that can be used to make requests from or to a server via any of the supported protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP, etc. This command-line tool supports some of the additional features like FTP upload, proxy support, resume transfer and limited bandwidth.

From the windows official build 1804, curl has been added to its tool-chain. You can check this by opening the windows command prompt and running the following command.

curl --version

Output:

curl 7.55.1 (windows)

The output might be changed based on your curl installation.

the curl in Windows PowerShell

In Windows PowerShell, you have to use the curl command in a slightly different way than in the Windows command prompt. Because the curl command is mapped as an alias to the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet. You can verify this by running the following command in a PowerShell window.

Get-Alias -Name curl

Output:

CommandType		Name						Version		Source
-----------		----						-------		------
Alias			curl -> Invoke-WebRequest

All these commands will be resolved in the PowerShell command execution process. Usually, the aliases have the highest priority. Therefore, you should use the curl.exe executable directly in the PowerShell instead of curl. You can use the Get-Command cmdlet to see how these two commands resolve in the runtime.

Get-Command curl

Output:

CommandType		Name						Version		Source
-----------		----						-------		------
Alias			curl -> Invoke-WebRequest

Get-Command curl.exe

Output:

CommandType		Name						Version		Source
-----------		----						-------		------
Application		curl.exe					7.55.1.0	C:\Windows\system32\curl.exe

The conclusion is that if you need to use the curl(as same as in the Windows command prompt) in PowerShell then you need to call the curl executable(curl.exe) directly. Else, you should stick to the PowerShell curl alias which resolves to the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet under the hood.

the curl Syntax in PowerShell

curl.exe [options] <url>

You can run the following command to get more information on curl command and its options such as -a, -C, etc…

curl.exe --help

Output:

Usage: curl [options...] <url>

-a, --append		Append to target file when uploading
.
.
.
-C, --continue-at	<offset> Resumed transfer offest

Example Scenarios

Displays the HTML web page returns as the response.

curl.exe https://www.google.com

Displays the response, request header and and response header.

curl.exe -v https://www.google.com

Displays the header information.

curl.exe -I https://www.google.com

Saves the Header information to a file called file1.txt.

curl.exe -I https://www.google.com -o file1.txt