Working with cURL utility

HTTP requests are composed of several components: HTTP method, URI, headers, query parameters, and request body. Each of these components plays an important role in communicating information between a client and a server.

The curl command is a popular command-line tool for making HTTP requests. It provides a way to specify each of the components of an HTTP request using command line parameters. When making requests to the Aspose.Words Cloud API, you can use curl to specify each of the HTTP request components.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the HTTP request components and how they relate to curl command line parameters:

• HTTP method. The HTTP method specifies the action that the client wants the server to take. The most commonly used HTTP methods are GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. In curl, The -X option is used to specify the HTTP method. In this example, we are using curl to send a GET request to retrieve the paragraphs of the first section in a Word document:

curl -X GET "https://api.aspose.cloud/v4.0/words/document.docx/sections/0/paragraphs"

• URI. The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) specifies the target resource being accessed. The URI is simply specified as the final argument in the curl command.

  Let’s take a look at the structure of the URI above. It consists of a scheme (https), a hostname (api.aspose.cloud), an API version (v4.0), a resource type (words), a document name (document.docx), and a resource endpoint (/sections/0/paragraphs). The resource endpoint specifies the path to the resource we want to access, which in this case is the paragraphs of the first section of a Word document. The endpoint contains two path segments separated by slashes: sections and paragraphs. sections/0 specifies the first section of the document, and paragraphs specifies the paragraphs within that section

• HTTP Headers. HTTP headers provide additional information about the request, such as the content type, authorization token, and more. In curl, headers can be specified using the -H option. For example, to include an authorization token in the request header, you would use the following command:

curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer [ACCESS_TOKEN]" "https://api.aspose.cloud/v4.0/words/document.docx"

• Request Body. The request body contains the data being sent as part of the request, such as form data or JSON payload. This component is optional, and not all requests will have a request body. In curl, the -F and -d options are used to specify the data to be sent in the request body. The -F option is used to send data in the form of name-value pairs, including files. This option uses the multipart/form-data content type to encode the data, which allows for the transmission of binary data as well as text data. The -F option is typically used when submitting web forms.

  Let’s look at an example of sending data in the request body.

curl -X POST "https://api.aspose.cloud/v4.0/words/convert" \
     -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
     -F "file=@/path/to/file.docx" \
     -F "format=pdf" \
     -d '{"fileName": "output.pdf"}' \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer [ACCESS_TOKEN]"

In this example, we are using curl to convert a Word document to PDF format. The -F option is used to specify the file to be uploaded and the desired output format. The -d option is used to provide additional data in the request body, in this case, the output file name. Note that the data provided with -d is in JSON format and needs to be enclosed in quotes to ensure it is treated as a single string.