If you don't have the tool installed, visit the download page on the cURL website to obtain the official source or a user-contributed binary package. Try typing curl in your favorite shell to see if the tool is installed and is in your PATH. However, all these examples can be readily applied to other Google Data APIs.ĬURL is commonly available on a default install of many UNIX/Linux platforms. This article uses examples based upon the Picasa Web Albums data API.

Some other tools are mentioned in this article for making these tasks easier. cURL is often used by developers to test Google Data services, as it supports the HTTP functionality required to interact with the APIs at a low level.ĬURL only provides support for performing the HTTP communication, so knowledge of the Google Data protocol, the service-specific protocol and the XML data format used is a prerequesite for working with the application. However, you're always welcome to use lower-level tools to work with our services, and it's pretty easy to do with a little guidance.ĬURL is a command-line application for performing requests using a variety of protocols including HTTP. We publish a number of client libraries to make interacting with Google Data APIs easier.

Authenticating to a Google Data ServiceĪt heart, Google Data APIs use Atom feeds and entries (XML) as a data format and HTTP as a protocol for data transmission - extending the Atom Publishing Protocol.

For information about authorizing requests with a newer API, see Google Accounts Authentication and Authorization.

For information about a specific new API, see the new API's documentation.

Warning: This page is about Google's older APIs, the Google Data APIs it's relevant only to the APIs that are listed in the Google Data APIs directory, many of which have been replaced with newer APIs.

How to install curl on a mac