cURL to Code Converter

What is a cURL to code converter?

A cURL to code converter turns a curl command — the kind you copy from API documentation, your browser’s “Copy as cURL” menu, or a Postman export — into ready-to-run source code in the language of your choice. Instead of manually translating flags like -X, -H, -d, and -u into your HTTP client’s API, you paste the command and get working code for Python, JavaScript, Go, PHP, and eight more targets in a fraction of a second. Everything happens client-side: your command, tokens, and request bodies never leave your browser.

curl is the universal language of HTTP examples. Almost every API — Stripe, GitHub, OpenAI, your own backend — documents its endpoints as curl one-liners because they are copy-paste runnable from any terminal. The problem starts the moment you need that same request inside an application. Now you have to know that curl’s -d maps to data= in Python requests but body: in fetch, that -u becomes SetBasicAuth in Go, and that a -F upload needs MultipartFormDataContent in C#. This tool encodes all of those mappings so you don’t have to remember them.

How to convert a curl command to code

1. Paste your curl command into the input area above. Multi-line commands with \ line continuations are fine — paste them exactly as they appear in the docs.
2. Choose a target language from the selector (Python – requests is the default).
3. Click Convert or press Ctrl+Enter. The generated code appears instantly.
4. Copy the result with the Copy button or Ctrl+Shift+C and drop it into your project.
5. Clear the workspace with Ctrl+L when you’re done.

The output also updates live as you type, so you can tweak a header or the body and watch the code change without clicking anything.

Supported languages and libraries

The converter emits idiomatic code for eleven popular targets:

Each generator uses the standard, widely-installed client for that ecosystem, so the code compiles and runs with minimal setup — no exotic dependencies.

Which curl flags the converter understands

Real-world curl commands lean on a small set of flags, and the parser handles all of the common ones:

• -X / --request — the HTTP method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, …). If you omit it, the method is inferred: POST when a body or form is present, otherwise GET.
• -H / --header — request headers. Every header is preserved in order.
• -d / --data / --data-raw / --data-binary / --data-urlencode — the request body. Multiple -d flags are joined with &, exactly like curl.
• -G / --get — send the data as a query string on a GET request instead of in the body.
• -F / --form — multipart form fields and file uploads (field=@file).
• -u / --user — HTTP basic authentication (user:password).
• -b / --cookie, -A / --user-agent, -e / --referer — mapped to the corresponding Cookie, User-Agent, and Referer headers.
• -I / --head — a HEAD request.
• -k / --insecure — disable TLS certificate verification (translated to the right option per language).
• -L / --location, --compressed, --url — recognized and handled where relevant.

Flags that only affect terminal behavior — -s, -v, -o, --connect-timeout, and friends — are safely ignored, so pasting a command straight from a shell script just works.

Headers, JSON bodies, and authentication

Two details trip people up when they translate curl by hand, and the converter gets both right:

The Content-Type default. If you send a body with -d but never specify a Content-Type, curl quietly defaults to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Many developers assume -d '{"a":1}' sends JSON — it does not, unless you add the header. The converter mirrors curl’s true behavior and inserts the urlencoded default so your generated code behaves identically to the command you tested. Add -H 'Content-Type: application/json' when you actually want JSON.

Authentication. A bearer token in -H 'Authorization: Bearer …' is copied through as a header. Basic auth from -u user:pass is translated to each language’s native helper — auth=(user, pass) in Python, req.SetBasicAuth(...) in Go, request.basic_auth(...) in Ruby, or a base64 Authorization: Basic header where that’s the idiomatic approach. Because everything is generated locally, your token never touches a network.

Multipart form uploads

File uploads are where hand-translation gets ugly, because every language builds multipart bodies differently. Write the upload the curl way:

curl -X POST https://api.example.com/upload \
  -F "avatar=@profile.png" \
  -F "user_id=42"

…and the tool produces the correct multipart request for the target: a files dict in Python requests, a FormData object in JavaScript, a multipart.NewWriter in Go, a MultipartFormDataContent in C#, request.set_form([...], 'multipart/form-data') in Ruby, and so on. File fields (@path) become a file-open call in the generated code — point the path at the real file on disk and it’s ready to run.

Common issues and how to fix them

• Unterminated quotes. If you paste half a command or a quote is missing, the parser reads to the end of the input. Make sure the command is complete and quotes are balanced.
• Windows vs. Unix line breaks. Docs sometimes use ^ (cmd) or a backtick (PowerShell) for line continuation instead of the Unix \. Convert those to \ — or just put the whole command on one line — before pasting.
• -d @file.json. curl can read a body from a file with @. The converter keeps the literal @file.json text rather than inventing a file read; swap it for the file’s actual contents or add a read call yourself.
• The wrong Content-Type. As above, -d without a Content-Type header produces urlencoded, not JSON. Add the header if your API expects JSON.

curl to Python: a worked example

Paste this:

curl -X POST https://api.example.com/v1/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_123" \
  -d '{"email":"me@example.com","remember":true}'

…select Python – requests, and you get:

import requests

url = "https://api.example.com/v1/login"
headers = {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Authorization": "Bearer sk_test_123",
}
payload = "{\"email\":\"me@example.com\",\"remember\":true}"
response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, data=payload)
print(response.text)

Switch the target to Go, PHP, or C# and the same request is re-expressed in that language’s conventions — no manual rewriting.

When you reach for a curl converter

• Shipping code from a shell prototype. You proved an integration works with a quick curl command; now you need it in your app’s language.
• APIs that only document curl. Many providers give a single curl example and expect you to translate it. This does that instantly for whichever stack you’re on.
• Porting between languages. Moving a service from Ruby to Go, or a script from Python to Node? Round-trip the request through curl and out the other side.
• “Copy as cURL” from the browser. Grab a request from your DevTools Network tab as curl, paste it here, and get client code that reproduces it.

curl to code vs. writing it by hand

Translating a curl command manually is doable for a simple GET, but it gets error-prone fast: forgetting curl’s urlencoded default, mishandling an escaped quote inside a JSON body, or wiring up multipart uploads by hand are all easy ways to introduce a bug that only shows up at runtime. A converter removes that whole class of mistakes and turns a two-minute translation into a two-second paste. Use it as a starting point, then adjust the generated code — timeouts, error handling, response parsing — to fit your codebase. When your response comes back as JSON, run it through a JSON formatter to read it, or generate types for it with the JSON to TypeScript converter.