NAME

       CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE - filename 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 filename 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.

       By passing the empty string ("") to this option, you enable the cookie engine without reading any initial
       cookies.  If  you tell libcurl the filename is "-" (just a single minus sign), libcurl instead reads from
       stdin.

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

       If you read cookies from a plain HTTP headers file and it does not specify a  domain  in  the  Set-Cookie
       line, then the cookie is not sent since the cookie domain cannot match the target URL's. To address this,
       set a domain in Set-Cookie line (doing that includes subdomains) or preferably: use the Netscape format.

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

       If  you  use  this option multiple times, you add more files to read cookies from. Setting this option to
       NULL disables the cookie engine and clears the list of files to read cookies from.

SECURITY CONCERNS

       This document previously mentioned how specifying a non-existing file can also enable the cookie  engine.
       While  true,  we  strongly  advise against using that method as it is too hard to be sure that files that
       stay that way in the long run.

DEFAULT

       NULL

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");

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

           res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

           curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
         }
       }

Cookie file format

       The  cookie  file  format  and  general  cookie   concepts   in   curl   are   described   online   here:
       https://curl.se/docs/http-cookies.html

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

       CURLOPT_COOKIE(3), CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR(3), CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION(3)

libcurl                                            2025-03-05                              CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE(3)