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CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3) Library Functions Manual CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3)

NAME
       CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING - automatic decompression of HTTP downloads

SYNOPSIS
       #include	<curl/curl.h>

       CURLcode	curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING,	char *enc);

DESCRIPTION
       Pass a char pointer argument specifying what encoding you would like.

       Sets  the  contents  of the Accept-Encoding: header sent	in an HTTP re-
       quest, and enables decoding of  a  response  when  a  Content-Encoding:
       header is received.

       libcurl potentially supports several different compressed encodings de-
       pending on what support that has	been built-in.

       To aid applications not having to bother	about what specific algorithms
       this  particular	 libcurl  build	supports, libcurl allows a zero-length
       string to be set	("") to	ask for	an Accept-Encoding: header to be  used
       that contains all built-in supported encodings.

       Alternatively,  you  can	specify	exactly	the encoding or	list of	encod-
       ings you	want in	the response. The following encodings  are  supported:
       identity,  meaning non-compressed, deflate which	requests the server to
       compress	its response using the zlib algorithm, gzip which requests the
       gzip algorithm, (since curl 7.57.0) br which is brotli and (since  curl
       7.72.0) zstd which is zstd. Provide them	in the string as a comma-sepa-
       rated list of accepted encodings, like: "br, gzip, deflate".

       Set  CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3) to NULL to explicitly disable it, which
       makes libcurl not send an Accept-Encoding: header  and  not  decompress
       received	contents automatically.

       You  can	 also  opt to just include the Accept-Encoding:	header in your
       request with CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3) but then there is no	automatic  de-
       compressing when	receiving data.

       This  is	a request, not an order; the server may	or may not do it. This
       option must be set (to any non-NULL value) or else any unsolicited  en-
       coding done by the server is ignored.

       Servers	might respond with Content-Encoding even without getting a Ac-
       cept-Encoding: in the request. Servers might respond with  a  different
       Content-Encoding	than what was asked for	in the request.

       The  Content-Length: servers send for a compressed response is supposed
       to indicate the length of the compressed	content	so when	auto  decoding
       is  enabled  it	may  not  match	the sum	of bytes reported by the write
       callbacks (although, sending the	length of the  non-compressed  content
       is a common server mistake).

       The  application	 does not have to keep the string around after setting
       this option.

       Using this option multiple times	makes the last set string override the
       previous	ones.

HISTORY
       This option was called CURLOPT_ENCODING before 7.21.6

NOTES
       The specific libcurl you	are using must have been built with zlib to be
       able to decompress gzip and deflate responses, with the brotli  library
       to  decompress brotli responses and with	the zstd library to decompress
       zstd responses.

DEFAULT
       NULL

PROTOCOLS
       This functionality affects http only

EXAMPLE
       int main(void)
       {
	 CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
	 if(curl) {
	   curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com");

	   /* enable all supported built-in compressions */
	   curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING, "");

	   /* Perform the request */
	   curl_easy_perform(curl);
	 }
       }

AVAILABILITY
       Added in	curl 7.21.6

RETURN VALUE
       curl_easy_setopt(3) returns a CURLcode indicating success or error.

       CURLE_OK	(0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred,
       see libcurl-errors(3).

SEE ALSO
       CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER(3), CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING(3),	CURLOPT_TRANS-
       FER_ENCODING(3)

libcurl				  2025-06-03	    CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3)

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