CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER(3) Library Functions Manual CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER(3)
NAME
CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER - automatically update the referer header
SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, long autorefer);
DESCRIPTION
Pass a long parameter set to 1 to enable this. When enabled, libcurl au-
tomatically sets the Referer: header field in HTTP requests to the full
URL when it follows a Location: redirect to a new destination.
The automatic referer is set to the full previous URL even when redi-
rects are done cross-origin or following redirects to insecure proto-
cols. This is considered a minor privacy leak by some.
With CURLINFO_REFERER(3), applications can extract the actually used
referer header after the transfer.
DEFAULT
0, disabled
PROTOCOLS
This functionality affects http only
EXAMPLE
int main(void)
{
CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
if(curl) {
CURLcode res;
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");
/* follow redirects */
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1L);
/* set Referer: automatically when following redirects */
curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, 1L);
res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
}
}
AVAILABILITY
Added in curl 7.1
RETURN VALUE
curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.
CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred,
see libcurl-errors(3).
SEE ALSO
CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL(3), CURLINFO_REDIRECT_URL(3), CURLINFO_REF-
ERER(3), CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION(3), CURLOPT_REFERER(3)
libcurl 2026-07-12 CURLOPT_AUTOREFERER(3)
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