curl

I know these posts for documenting my adventures in Linux (Kubuntu, to be exact) and it’s because I’m not encountering as many questions in operation as I did almost two weeks ago. Today I have something to add for those with iPhone/iPod Touch, specifically those who have applications such as Discover or other remote file access applications that are accessible via FTP or WebDAV. In Kubuntu I don’t have any FTP programs installed and therefore could only use a built-in tool… like cURL! cURL is an *amazing* open-source internet-download/upload-do-anything-you-need-to-do tool which is command line only (unless you use a GUI implementation, but that’s not as powerful).

The basic cURL syntax is curl and then the arguments. For example to download the TWiT Video using curl you would use curl http://bglive-a.bitgravity.com/twit/live/high -ooutput.flv (note that the -o or output tag doesn’t have a space between it and the output file name.) However for uploading the command I used was the -T, or upload. This is what I used curl -T ~/Desktop/SN-039.mp3 http://192.168.1.113:8888/sn39.mp3 this incorporates the source filename (and path) and the destination path (and destination file name, this is required).

This post is mostly for my future reference, if it’s useful then I’m happy, if you’re new to this whole idea of putting files on your iPhone/Pod Touch then I welcome you to this new world. If you’re curious why I would put an MP3 file on my iPod without going to through iTunes, consider the times that you don’t have time to update your iPod, specifically if it’s an MP3 file that you can’t get through the iTunes podcast store (I do not encourage music piracy, even if this could be used very effectively for it).

Remember, if you’re using Mac OS X then you have cURL already. (It’s shipped with OS X since version 10.2, if I recall, otherwise you will have to download it using the command apt-get install curl, but that’s for another day.)