NAME

       CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE - file name to read cookies from

SYNOPSIS

       #include <curl/curl.h>

       CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, char *filename);

DESCRIPTION

       Pass  a  pointer  to a null-terminated string as parameter. It should point to the file name of your file
       holding cookie data to read. The cookie data can be in either the old  Netscape  /  Mozilla  cookie  data
       format or just regular HTTP headers (Set-Cookie style) dumped to a file.

       It also enables the cookie engine, making libcurl parse and send cookies on subsequent requests with this
       handle.

       Given  an  empty  or non-existing file or by passing the empty string ("") to this option, you can enable
       the cookie engine without reading any initial cookies. If you tell libcurl the file name is "-"  (just  a
       single minus sign), libcurl will instead read from stdin.

       This option only reads cookies. To make libcurl write cookies to file, see CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3).

       If  you  use the Set-Cookie file format and do not specify a domain then the cookie is not sent since the
       domain will never match. To address this, set a domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that will  include  sub-
       domains) or preferably: use the Netscape format.

       If  you  use this option multiple times, you just add more files to read.  Subsequent files will add more
       cookies.

       The application does not have to keep the string around after setting this option.

       Setting this option to NULL will (since 7.77.0) explicitly disable the cookie engine and clear  the  list
       of files to read cookies from.

DEFAULT

       NULL

PROTOCOLS

       HTTP

EXAMPLE

       CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
       if(curl) {
         curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/foo.bin");

         /* get cookies from an existing file */
         curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, "/tmp/cookies.txt");

         ret = curl_easy_perform(curl);

         curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
       }

Cookie file format

       The  cookie  file  format  and general cookie concepts in curl are described in the HTTP-COOKIES.md file,
       also hosted online here: https://curl.se/docs/http-cookies.html

AVAILABILITY

       As long as HTTP is supported

RETURN VALUE

       Returns CURLE_OK if HTTP is supported, and CURLE_UNKNOWN_OPTION if not.

SEE ALSO

       CURLOPT_COOKIE(3), CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3),

libcurl 7.81.0                                  November 26, 2021                          CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3)