curl -F what does it mean? php instagram
From man curl:
-F, --form <name=content> (HTTP) This lets curl emulate a filled-in form in which a user has pressed the submit button. This causes curl to POST data using the Content-Type multipart/form-data according to RFC 2388. This enables uploading of binary files etc. To force the 'content' part to be a file, prefix the file name with an @ sign. To just get the content part from a file, prefix the file name with the symbol <. The difference between @ and < is then that @ makes a file get attached in the post as a file upload, while the < makes a text field and just get the contents for that text field from a file. Example, to send your password file to the server, where 'password' is the name of the form-field to which /etc/passwd will be the input: curl -F password=@/etc/passwd www.mypasswords.com To read content from stdin instead of a file, use - as the filename. This goes for both @ and < constructs. You can also tell curl what Content-Type to use by using 'type=', in a manner similar to: curl -F "web=@index.html;type=text/html" url.com or curl -F "name=daniel;type=text/foo" url.com You can also explicitly change the name field of a file upload part by setting filename=, like this: curl -F "file=@localfile;filename=nameinpost" url.com See further examples and details in the MANUAL. This option can be used multiple times.
curl is a linux utility that simulates web requests. Issuing a curl -F command issues a http request with form submission data. In this case, the form data is the data access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN and it is being issued to the url https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/{media-id}/likes
Further information on what cURL is and what it does can be found at http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html