curl_url_set(3) Library Functions Manual curl_url_set(3)
NAME
curl_url_set - set a URL part
SYNOPSIS
#include <curl/curl.h>
CURLUcode curl_url_set(CURLU *url,
CURLUPart part,
const char *content,
unsigned int flags);
DESCRIPTION
The url handle to work on, passed in as the first argument, must be a
handle previously created by curl_url(3) or curl_url_dup(3).
This function sets or updates individual URL components, or parts, held
by the URL object the handle identifies.
The part argument should identify the particular URL part (see list be-
low) to set or change, with content pointing to a null-terminated string
with the new contents for that URL part. The contents should be in the
form and encoding they would use in a URL: URL encoded.
When setting a part in the URL object that was previously already set,
it replaces the data that was previously stored for that part with the
new content.
The caller does not have to keep content around after a successful call
as this function copies the content.
Setting a part to a NULL pointer removes that part's contents from the
CURLU handle.
This function has an 8 MB maximum length limit for all provided input
strings. In the real world, excessively long fields in URLs cause prob-
lems even if this function accepts them.
When setting or updating contents of individual URL parts,
curl_url_set(3) might accept data that would not be otherwise possible
to set in the string when it gets populated as a result of a full URL
parse. Beware. If done so, extracting a full URL later on from such com-
ponents might render an invalid URL.
The flags argument is a bitmask with independent features.
PARTS
CURLUPART_URL
Allows the full URL of the handle to be replaced. If the handle
already is populated with a URL, the new URL can be relative to
the previous.
When successfully setting a new URL, relative or absolute, the
handle contents is replaced with the components of the newly set
URL.
Pass a pointer to a null-terminated string to the url parameter.
The string must point to a correctly formatted "RFC 3986+" URL or
be a NULL pointer. The URL parser only understands and parses the
subset of URLS that are "hierarchical" and therefore contain a
:// separator - not the ones that are normally specified with
only a colon separator.
By default this API only parses URLs using schemes for protocols
that are supported built-in. To make libcurl parse URLs generi-
cally even for schemes it does not know about, the CURLU_NON_SUP-
PORT_SCHEME flags bit must be set. Otherwise, this function re-
turns CURLUE_UNSUPPORTED_SCHEME for URL schemes it does not rec-
ognize.
Unless CURLU_NO_AUTHORITY is set, a blank hostname is not allowed
in the URL.
When a full URL is set (parsed), the hostname component is stored
URL decoded.
It is considered fine to set a blank URL ("") as a redirect, but
not as a normal URL. Therefore, setting a "" URL works fine if
the handle already holds a URL, otherwise it triggers an error.
CURLUPART_SCHEME
Scheme cannot be URL decoded on set. libcurl only accepts setting
schemes up to 40 bytes long.
CURLUPART_USER
If only the user part is set and not the password, the URL is
represented with a blank password.
CURLUPART_PASSWORD
If only the password part is set and not the user, the URL is
represented with a blank user.
CURLUPART_OPTIONS
The options field is an optional field that might follow the
password in the userinfo part. It is only recognized/used when
parsing URLs for the following schemes: pop3, smtp and imap. This
function however allows users to independently set this field.
CURLUPART_HOST
The hostname. If it is International Domain Name (IDN) the string
must then be encoded as your locale says or UTF-8 (when WinIDN is
used). If it is a bracketed IPv6 numeric address it may contain a
zone id (or you can use CURLUPART_ZONEID).
Note that if you set an IPv6 address, it gets ruined and causes
an error if you also set the CURLU_URLENCODE flag.
Unless CURLU_NO_AUTHORITY is set, a blank hostname is not allowed
to set.
CURLUPART_ZONEID
If the hostname is a numeric IPv6 address, this field can also be
set.
CURLUPART_PORT
The port number cannot be URL encoded on set. The given port num-
ber is provided as a string and the decimal number in it must be
between 0 and 65535. Anything else returns an error.
CURLUPART_PATH
If a path is set in the URL without a leading slash, a slash is
prepended automatically.
CURLUPART_QUERY
The query part gets spaces converted to pluses when asked to URL
encode on set with the CURLU_URLENCODE bit.
If used together with the CURLU_APPENDQUERY bit, the provided
part is appended on the end of the existing query.
The question mark in the URL is not part of the actual query con-
tents.
CURLUPART_FRAGMENT
The hash sign in the URL is not part of the actual fragment con-
tents.
FLAGS
The flags argument is zero, one or more bits set in a bitmask.
CURLU_APPENDQUERY
Can be used when setting the CURLUPART_QUERY component. The pro-
vided new part is then appended at the end of the existing query
- and if the previous part did not end with an ampersand (&), an
ampersand gets inserted before the new appended part.
When CURLU_APPENDQUERY is used together with CURLU_URLENCODE, the
first '=' symbol is not URL encoded.
CURLU_NON_SUPPORT_SCHEME
If set, allows curl_url_set(3) to set a non-supported scheme. It
then of course cannot know if the provided scheme is a valid one
or not.
CURLU_URLENCODE
When set, curl_url_set(3) URL encodes the part on entry, except
for scheme, port and URL.
When setting the path component with URL encoding enabled, the
slash character is skipped.
The query part gets space-to-plus converted before the URL con-
version is applied.
This URL encoding is charset unaware and converts the input in a
byte-by-byte manner.
CURLU_DEFAULT_SCHEME
If set, allows the URL to be set without a scheme and then sets
that to the default scheme: HTTPS. Overrides the
CURLU_GUESS_SCHEME option if both are set.
CURLU_GUESS_SCHEME
If set, allows the URL to be set without a scheme and it instead
"guesses" which scheme that was intended based on the hostname.
If the outermost subdomain name matches DICT, FTP, IMAP, LDAP,
POP3 or SMTP then that scheme is used, otherwise it picks HTTP.
Conflicts with the CURLU_DEFAULT_SCHEME option which takes prece-
dence if both are set.
If guessing is not allowed and there is no default scheme set,
trying to parse a URL without a scheme returns error.
If the scheme ends up set as a result of guessing, i.e. it is not
actually present in the parsed URL, it can later be figured out
by using the CURLU_NO_GUESS_SCHEME flag when subsequently getting
the URL or the scheme with curl_url_get(3).
CURLU_NO_AUTHORITY
If set, skips authority checks. The RFC allows individual schemes
to omit the host part (normally the only mandatory part of the
authority), but libcurl cannot know whether this is permitted for
custom schemes. Specifying the flag permits empty authority sec-
tions, similar to how file scheme is handled.
CURLU_PATH_AS_IS
When set for CURLUPART_URL, this skips the normalization of the
path. That is the procedure where libcurl otherwise removes se-
quences of dot-slash and dot-dot etc. The same option used for
transfers is called CURLOPT_PATH_AS_IS(3).
CURLU_ALLOW_SPACE
If set, the URL parser allows space (ASCII 32) where possible.
The URL syntax does normally not allow spaces anywhere, but they
should be encoded as %20 or '+'. When spaces are allowed, they
are still not allowed in the scheme. When space is used and al-
lowed in a URL, it is stored as-is unless CURLU_URLENCODE is also
set, which then makes libcurl URL encode the space before stored.
This affects how the URL is constructed when curl_url_get(3) is
subsequently used to extract the full URL or individual parts.
(Added in 7.78.0)
CURLU_DISALLOW_USER
If set, the URL parser does not accept embedded credentials for
the CURLUPART_URL, and instead returns CURLUE_USER_NOT_ALLOWED
for such URLs.
PROTOCOLS
This functionality affects all supported protocols
EXAMPLE
int main(void)
{
CURLUcode rc;
CURLU *url = curl_url();
rc = curl_url_set(url, CURLUPART_URL, "https://example.com", 0);
if(!rc) {
/* change it to an FTP URL */
rc = curl_url_set(url, CURLUPART_SCHEME, "ftp", 0);
}
curl_url_cleanup(url);
}
AVAILABILITY
Added in curl 7.62.0
RETURN VALUE
Returns a CURLUcode error value, which is CURLUE_OK (0) if everything
went fine. See the libcurl-errors(3) man page for the full list with de-
scriptions.
The input string passed to curl_url_set(3) must be shorter than eight
million bytes. Otherwise this function returns CURLUE_MALFORMED_INPUT.
If this function returns an error, no URL part is set.
SEE ALSO
CURLOPT_CURLU(3), curl_url(3), curl_url_cleanup(3), curl_url_dup(3),
curl_url_get(3), curl_url_strerror(3)
libcurl 2026-07-12 curl_url_set(3)
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