1 Short: E
2 Long: cert
3 Arg: <certificate[:password]>
4 Help: Client certificate file and password
5 Protocols: TLS
6 See-also: cert-type key key-type
7 Category: tls
8 Example: --cert certfile --key keyfile $URL
9 ---
10 Tells curl to use the specified client certificate file when getting a file
11 with HTTPS, FTPS or another SSL-based protocol. The certificate must be in
12 PKCS#12 format if using Secure Transport, or PEM format if using any other
13 engine.  If the optional password isn't specified, it will be queried for on
14 the terminal. Note that this option assumes a \&"certificate" file that is the
15 private key and the client certificate concatenated! See --cert and --key to
16 specify them independently.
17 
18 If curl is built against the NSS SSL library then this option can tell
19 curl the nickname of the certificate to use within the NSS database defined
20 by the environment variable SSL_DIR (or by default /etc/pki/nssdb). If the
21 NSS PEM PKCS#11 module (libnsspem.so) is available then PEM files may be
22 loaded. If you want to use a file from the current directory, please precede
23 it with "./" prefix, in order to avoid confusion with a nickname.  If the
24 nickname contains ":", it needs to be preceded by "\\" so that it is not
25 recognized as password delimiter.  If the nickname contains "\\", it needs to
26 be escaped as "\\\\" so that it is not recognized as an escape character.
27 
28 If curl is built against OpenSSL library, and the engine pkcs11 is available,
29 then a PKCS#11 URI (RFC 7512) can be used to specify a certificate located in
30 a PKCS#11 device. A string beginning with "pkcs11:" will be interpreted as a
31 PKCS#11 URI. If a PKCS#11 URI is provided, then the --engine option will be set
32 as "pkcs11" if none was provided and the --cert-type option will be set as
33 "ENG" if none was provided.
34 
35 (iOS and macOS only) If curl is built against Secure Transport, then the
36 certificate string can either be the name of a certificate/private key in the
37 system or user keychain, or the path to a PKCS#12-encoded certificate and
38 private key. If you want to use a file from the current directory, please
39 precede it with "./" prefix, in order to avoid confusion with a nickname.
40 
41 (Schannel only) Client certificates must be specified by a path
42 expression to a certificate store. (Loading PFX is not supported; you can
43 import it to a store first). You can use
44 "<store location>\\<store name>\\<thumbprint>" to refer to a certificate
45 in the system certificates store, for example,
46 "CurrentUser\\MY\\934a7ac6f8a5d579285a74fa61e19f23ddfe8d7a". Thumbprint is
47 usually a SHA-1 hex string which you can see in certificate details. Following
48 store locations are supported: CurrentUser, LocalMachine, CurrentService,
49 Services, CurrentUserGroupPolicy, LocalMachineGroupPolicy,
50 LocalMachineEnterprise.
51 
52 If this option is used several times, the last one will be used.
53