Is there a way to follow redirects with command line cURL?

Question

I know that in a php script:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

will follow redirects. Is there a way to follow redirects with command line cURL?

Answer 1

Use the location header flag:

curl -L <URL>

Answer 2

As said, to follow redirects you can use the flag -L or --location:

curl -L http://www.example.com

But, if you want limit the number of redirects, add the parameter --max-redirs

--max-redirs <num>

Set maximum number of redirection-followings allowed. If -L, --location is used, this option can be used to prevent curl from following redirections "in absurdum". By default, the limit is set to 50 redirections. Set this option to -1 to make it limitless. If this option is used several times, the last one will be used.

Answer 3

I had a similar problem. I am posting my solution here because I believe it might help one of the commenters.

For me, the obstacle was that the page required a login and then gave me a new URL through javascript. Here is what I had to do:

curl -c cookiejar -g -O -J -L -F "j_username=username" -F "j_password=password" <URL>

Note that j_username and j_password is the name of the fields for my website's login form. You will have to open the source of the webpage to see what the 'name' of the username field and the 'name' of the password field is in your case. After that I go an html file with java script in which the new URL was embedded. After parsing this out just resubmit with the new URL:

curl -c cookiejar -g -O -J -L -F "j_username=username" -F "j_password=password" <NEWURL>