cURL → Code Converter

How to use

Paste a `curl ...` command — single line or multi-line with backslash continuation, with quotes around values, whatever shape the API docs gave you. The parser splits it into method, URL, headers, body, and auth, then emits the equivalent snippet in JavaScript fetch, axios, Python requests, and Go `net/http`. Switch tabs to pick the target language, copy the snippet, and paste it into your code editor.

Reach for this when an API doc gives a curl example and your stack speaks something else, when you reverse-engineer a browser network request (right-click → Copy as cURL in Chrome / Firefox DevTools), or when you draft a request in Postman / Insomnia and want to commit the equivalent code. The conversion handles the common options (`-X`, `-H` with multiple headers, `-d` / `--data` / `--data-raw`, `-u` for basic auth, `--form` for multipart, line continuation with `\`), but always verify the output runs cleanly — every language has its own escaping rules and a curl-to-code translator can only guess at the intent of unusual flag combinations.

Examples

curl https://api.example.com/users/42 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOi..." \
  -H "Accept: application/json"

// fetch
await fetch("https://api.example.com/users/42", {
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Bearer eyJhbGciOi...",
    "Accept": "application/json",
  },
});

# requests
requests.get(
  "https://api.example.com/users/42",
  headers={
    "Authorization": "Bearer eyJhbGciOi...",
    "Accept": "application/json",
  },
)

curl -X POST https://api.example.com/orders \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"item_id": 42, "quantity": 2}'

// fetch
await fetch("https://api.example.com/orders", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({ "item_id": 42, "quantity": 2 }),
});

# requests
requests.post(
  "https://api.example.com/orders",
  json={"item_id": 42, "quantity": 2},
)

curl -X POST https://api.example.com/upload \
  -u admin:secret \
  --form "[email protected]" \
  --form "caption=hello"

// fetch
const form = new FormData();
form.append("file", fileInput.files[0]);
form.append("caption", "hello");
await fetch("https://api.example.com/upload", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Authorization": "Basic " + btoa("admin:secret") },
  body: form,
});

# requests
requests.post(
  "https://api.example.com/upload",
  auth=("admin", "secret"),
  files={"file": open("photo.jpg", "rb")},
  data={"caption": "hello"},
)

FAQ

Related concepts

curl (1997, Daniel Stenberg) is the lingua franca of HTTP — a command-line client that ships in every Linux distro, macOS, Windows 10+, Docker base image, and CI runner. Its syntax doubles as documentation: every HTTP request can be expressed as a one-line curl invocation, which is why API docs at Stripe, GitHub, Twilio, AWS, and almost everyone else use curl examples regardless of what the underlying SDK looks like. Converting from curl is converting from the documentation's native form into yours.

The parsing is harder than it looks. Shell tokenization (quotes, escapes, backslash line continuation, `$variable` substitution) happens before curl ever sees its arguments, so a robust parser has to imitate enough of POSIX shell to split the input correctly. Then each flag has its own semantics — `-d` switches to POST and sets a Content-Type, `-G` reverses that to GET with query params, `-H` is repeatable, `-u user:pass` produces a Basic Auth header, `--data-urlencode key=value` URL-encodes the value before sending. Production converters maintain a flag table sourced from `man curl`; this tool covers the 30 or so flags that appear in 99% of real-world curl commands.

Three adjacent ideas matter. **OpenAPI / Swagger** describes the same request abstractly enough that any code generator can emit clients in dozens of languages — the systematic answer to the one-off curl-to-code problem. **HAR (HTTP Archive)** is the JSON format browsers export when you "Save all as HAR" in DevTools; it preserves the full request / response with headers and bodies and converts cleanly to curl or code via tools like `har2curl`. **Postman / Insomnia / Bruno** are the GUI version of the same workflow — paste curl, get a request you can edit, export to multiple languages. This converter sits between curl and editor code, the simplest of those forms.