CURL is a versatile library that allows you to transfer data to servers and from servers easily. You can use cURL proxies to have access to target servers and this has been standard practice for decades now.
If you are a new user, you should test your proxy setting and gates with a simple cURL string. You can transfer, and have access to data without giving up your anonymity as you do it with a proxy.
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WHAT IS A CURL?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=7XUibDYw4mc&feature=emb_logo
CURL library is a command-line utility tool that allows you to transfer data with various network protocols. CURL stands for the Client URL. Imagine it to be a library that allows you to get access to data over the internet. Some developers use it to get API points and were initially developed to pull forex rates for IRC users.
Reference Link = The Difference Between Reverse Proxy and Forward Proxy
CURL supports a good number of network protocols, its portable, and works on the majority of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Solaris, Android, iOS, macOS, and a lot more. You can also use it in many programming languages including Python, Java, C/C++, and PHP.
USING CURL WITH A PROXY
It’s pretty easy to set cURL up to work with proxies. Note however that most windows and macOS devices already have cURL preinstalled and all you need to do is use it. To use cURL proxies, you need a variable in the cURL syntax and the variable depends on the authentication type you want to use.
IP AUTHENTICATION
If you make use of a proxy, there are different protocols you can use including HTTP(s) and Socks4/5.
http://
https://
socks4://
socks5://
socks4a://
socks5h
Most proxy service providers allow user authentication by whitelisting their real IP addresses with the proxy they want to use. By this, there is no need for a username and password for authentication. This is the simplex in terms of cURL syntax and the command to use is the –x command or –proxy command. The full command is:
CURL –x [proxy protocol][:port]
For example, you want to use 123.45.34:4325 proxy and your real IP address have already been whitelisted with the proxy, all you have to do is to type the following command:
CURL –x 123:45.34.32:4325 https://ipinfo.io
Note that the last command is not a part of the command to set up proxies, but a get request to the website that displays the IP address the user is accessing the internet with. So you can test if your proxy setting works or not.
USERNAME AND PASSWORD AUTHENTICATION
Even though IP authentication may be the easiest, the username and password form of authentication is most popular. Most providers will give you a username and password authentication rather than IP authentication. If you will use the –x command in addition to username and password authentication, then you would have to introduce the –U command.
CURL –U [username:password] –x [proxy protocol][:port]
With the same made-up proxy port and address used above, we will now create a text command:
CURL –U [user12:oapwe] –x 123.45.34.32:4325 https://ipinfo.io
It’s that easy and now you can cURL for both private or dedicated IP proxy.
CURL PROXY API CODE
cURL --proxy zproxy.lum-superproxy.io:22225 --proxy-user lum-customer-usernam:password "http://lumtest.com/myip.json"
$ cURL http://httpbin.org/get \
-U 77409f72fe0c4a3e8413654411de0380: \
-x proxy.crawlera.com:8010
cURL "http://api.scraperapi.com?api_key=3ff1f5e972791859ac9960827414be23&url=http://httpbin.org/ip"
cURL "http://api.scraperapi.com?api_key=3ff1f5e972791859ac9960827414be23&url=http://httpbin.org/ip"
WHY CHECK PROXIES WITH CURL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1tZ84lK7PA&feature=emb_logo
CURL is used because it’s the easiest way to check the endpoint of your proxy set up before you begin data scraping. It has been a standard for over 20 years and has proven to be stable, light, and effective.
USE OF CURL IN INTERNET MARKETING
CURL isn’t as popular as it used to be anymore as developers don’t incorporate into their systems as often as it were in the past. This is because there are other alternatives around.
When developers need to test their API endpoints functionality now, they either use Postman or other GUI tools. Some developers go for simple tools like wget instead of using the more complicated cURL. Despite this, there are still a good number of internet marketers that still use cURL.
Interesting Read = What is an SSL Proxy? | Buy SSL proxies
Apart from high-end systems, the cURL library is used in internet marketing for testing. Before proxies are used for web scraping, they need to be tested for their functionalities and cURL is useful there.
About the author
Rachael Chapman
A Complete Gamer and a Tech Geek. Brings out all her thoughts and Love in Writing Techie Blogs.
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