Developer Tools

cURL Command Parser

Paste a curl command and read a clear explanation: method, URL, headers, body, auth, cookies, and every flag, decoded in your browser.

cURL command

Paste the full command, including line continuations. Browser DevTools' "Copy as cURL" output works as-is.

Samples

Summary

Top-level read of what the command does. Effective method, host, header count, body shape, and notable behavior flags.

Effective method: POST
URL: https://api.example.com/v1/orders
Effective headers: 2
Body: JSON
Follows redirects: No
TLS verification: Enabled (default)
Compressed: No
HEAD only: No

Request line

POST https://api.example.com/v1/orders

Scheme: https
Host: api.example.com
Port: 443
Path: /v1/orders

Effective headers

Headers that will actually be sent. Includes headers added directly with -H, plus Authorization, Cookie, User-Agent, Referer, Accept-Encoding, and Content-Type added by other flags or inferred from the body.

Content-Type: application/json
Set directly with -H/--header.
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN
Set directly with -H/--header.

Request body

The bytes curl will send as the request body. JSON is pretty-printed and url-encoded form payloads are decoded for readability. The raw bytes are unchanged.

JSON (pretty-printed)

{
  "customer_id": 42,
  "items": [
    {
      "sku": "ABC-1",
      "qty": 2
    }
  ]
}

Flags explained

Every recognized flag in the command, grouped by what it controls. The values shown are the literal arguments after shell tokenizing (quotes already removed).

Request line

-Xaliases: --request1 occurrence
Sets the HTTP method explicitly. Without it, curl uses GET, or POST when a body is present.
- -X POST

Headers

-Haliases: --header2 occurrences
Adds a request header. Repeated to send multiple headers. Replaces curl's default for that header.
- -H Content-Type: application/json
- -H Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN

Body

-daliases: --data, --data-raw1 occurrence
Sends the value as the request body. Default Content-Type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. --data-raw skips the @file interpretation.
- -d {"customer_id":42,"items":[{"sku":"ABC-1","qty":2}]}

Common flags reference

Quick reminder of the curl options you see most often in API documentation and DevTools output. The parser above understands all of these.

Set the method

-X POST

Forces the HTTP method. Without it, curl uses GET, or POST when a body is present.

Add a header

-H 'Authorization: Bearer ...'

Repeat -H once per header. Each value is the name, a colon, then the value.

Send a JSON body

-d '{"id":1}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

curl does not infer Content-Type for JSON; add -H 'Content-Type: application/json' yourself.

Send a form body

-d 'user=alice&pass=hunter2'

Default Content-Type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Multiple -d flags are joined with &.

Upload a file

-F 'file=@photo.jpg'

-F uses multipart/form-data with a generated boundary. The leading @ means "file path".

HTTP Basic auth

-u user:password

Encodes user:password as base64 and sets Authorization: Basic ...

Follow redirects

-L

Without -L, curl prints the 3xx response and stops at the first hop.

Skip TLS verification

-k

Accepts any certificate. Useful locally; never use against production endpoints.

Send cookies

-b 'session=abc; theme=dark'

Sets a single Cookie header. Multiple pairs are separated by semicolons.

Time the request

--max-time 30

Aborts the operation if the total time exceeds the value in seconds.

Decompress responses

--compressed

Advertises gzip/deflate/brotli support and transparently decodes the response.

Pretty browser copy

Copy as cURL (DevTools)

Browser DevTools network panels include this option on every request and produce a working curl command.

How to use

Paste a curl command into the input area, or click any sample button (GET with bearer, POST JSON, form login, basic auth, multipart upload, redirects with cookies, insecure local) to load a typical shape.
Read the Summary card for the effective method, URL, header count, body type, redirect, TLS, and compression state.
Scan the Request line panel for the scheme, host, port, path, and decoded query parameters.
Check Effective headers for the literal Name: Value lines that will be sent, including headers synthesized from -u, -b, -A, -e, and --compressed, plus an inferred Content-Type when the command omits one.
Review the Request body panel for a JSON pretty-print, URL-encoded form fields, or multipart parts. Use the Notes panel to spot unrecognized tokens, ambiguous flags, or warnings the parser found.

About this tool

cURL Command Parser turns any curl invocation into a structured, plain-English explanation so you can review it before you run it. Paste a command from a browser DevTools "Copy as cURL" export, an API documentation page, a Stack Overflow answer, or a colleague's terminal scrollback, and the parser tokenizes the input the same way a POSIX shell would: single quotes are literal, double quotes honor backslash escapes for the quote character, backslash, dollar sign, backtick, newline, and tab, $'...' ANSI-C quoting decodes \n, \t, \r, \\, \', and \" escapes, backslash-newline continuations are joined, and bare words split on whitespace. The result is rendered in dedicated sections so each part of the command is easy to read at a glance: a Summary panel with the effective method, host, header count, body type, redirect behavior, and TLS verification state; a Request line panel that decomposes the URL into scheme, host, port, path, query parameters, and optional byte range; an Effective headers panel that combines every -H header with the headers curl synthesizes itself, including Authorization for -u/--user (UTF-8 to base64 encoded, Latin-1 safe), Cookie for -b/--cookie, User-Agent for -A, Referer for -e, Accept-Encoding for --compressed, and a Content-Type inferred from the body shape when the command omits one; an HTTP Basic auth panel that shows the username, password, encoded value, and the final Authorization header; a Cookies panel that breaks the Cookie header into name and value pairs; a Request body panel that pretty-prints JSON, decodes URL-encoded forms, lists multipart fields and -F file uploads, and surfaces -T/--upload-file targets; and a Flags explained panel that groups every recognized flag by purpose (request line, headers, body, authentication, behavior, TLS, proxy, output) with the canonical long form, every alias, the description, and each occurrence with its value. Unrecognized tokens and ambiguous inputs surface as warnings instead of silent drops, so you can tell when a flag was misspelled, a header was missing a colon, or a -d value was concatenated with another. Everything runs in your browser; the curl command and any bearer tokens, cookies, or credentials it contains never leave your device. Useful for understanding API documentation faster, auditing curl commands before pasting them into a terminal, comparing what a request will look like against what a backend expects, teaching curl to junior engineers, and double-checking that a complicated DevTools export does what you think it does.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.

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