How to test web service using command line curl

Answering my own question.

curl -X GET --basic --user username:password \     https://www.example.com/mobile/resourcecurl -X DELETE --basic --user username:password \     https://www.example.com/mobile/resourcecurl -X PUT --basic --user username:password -d 'param1_name=param1_value' \     -d 'param2_name=param2_value' https://www.example.com/mobile/resource

POSTing a file and additional parameter

curl -X POST -F 'param_name=@/filepath/filename' \     -F 'extra_param_name=extra_param_value' --basic --user username:password \     https://www.example.com/mobile/resource

In addition to existing answers it is often desired to format the REST output (typically JSON and XML lacks indentation). Try this:

$ curl https://api.twitter.com/1/help/configuration.xml  | xmllint --format -$ curl https://api.twitter.com/1/help/configuration.json | python -mjson.tool

Tested on Ubuntu 11.0.4/11.10.

Another issue is the desired content type. Twitter uses .xml/.json extension, but more idiomatic REST would require Accept header:

$ curl -H "Accept: application/json"

From the documentation on http://curl.haxx.se/docs/httpscripting.html :

HTTP Authentication

curl --user name:password http://www.example.com 

Put a file to a HTTP server with curl:

curl --upload-file uploadfile http://www.example.com/receive.cgi

Send post data with curl:

curl --data "birthyear=1905&press=%20OK%20" http://www.example.com/when.cgi