curlike

A curl that works everywhere Python does. pycurl is a curl-compatible command in pure Python, over the standard library, with curl's exit codes and messages, checked line for line against real curl; and curlike is the library behind it. It never runs the real curl. Documentation: https://jose-pr.github.io/curlike/.

Features

• Answers as curl does — the common surface (request, auth, body, output, downloads, TLS, proxies including SOCKS and https proxies, redirects, cookies, -w, --retry). The exit codes and messages are measured against curl's own builds, and the version it imitates is configurable.
• Fails loud — an option it does not implement is curl: (2) Unsupported options: …, never silently ignored.
• Your own TLS context — from Python, curlike.main(argv, ssl_context=...) runs the curl command line over a context you built: mutual TLS with a keystore identity, a cipher list, a pinned protocol version.
• The system's proxy — syshttp routes it: SYSHTTP_PROXY, the *_PROXY variables, else the system's configuration for the URL (PAC and WPAD included), its prefix[:/endpoint] gateways included.

Installation

pip install curlike

Quick start

import curlike

rc = curlike.main(["-s", "-o", "page.html", "https://example.com/"])

Mutual TLS with a context of your own:

import ssl
import curlike

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.load_cert_chain("client.pem", "client.key")
rc = curlike.main(["-s", "https://mtls.example/"], ssl_context=ctx)

Command line

pycurl https://example.com
pycurl -s -o out.json -H 'Accept: application/json' https://api.example.com/x
python -m curlike -X POST --json '{"k":1}' https://httpbin.org/post

API overview

The other modules hold the command's option groups and transfer machinery and are private.

Settings

Every variable has a full name, read under each prefix of SYSHTTP_PREFIX (a :-separated list of literal prefixes; none by default, so the names as written): SYSHTTP_PREFIX=AGENTS_ reads AGENTS_SYSHTTP_PROXY, AGENTS_HTTPS_PROXY and AGENTS_NO_PROXY and nothing unprefixed, AGENTS_: falls back to the plain names.

Development

dotagents pyvenv            # or any Python 3.9+ virtual environment
.pyvenv/<tag>/Scripts/python -m pip install -e ../syshttp -e ".[dev]"
.pyvenv/<tag>/Scripts/python -m pytest -q

The parity tests compare curlike with the real curl on PATH, and are skipped when there is none.

Releasing

This project follows Semantic Versioning and keeps a CHANGELOG.md. Pushing a tag matching v* triggers the release workflow: test gate → build (checking the tag names the version built) → a strict docs build as a gate → GitHub release → publish. The release workflow never deploys the docs site itself: for a final release its last job dispatches the docs workflow at the tag, which owns every Pages deploy.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.