Facebook API - What is " curl -F "?

Question

From Facebook Graph Api (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/) :

Publishing: You can publish to the Facebook graph by issuing HTTP POST requests to the appropriate connection URLs, using an access token. For example, you can post a new wall post on Arjun's wall by issuing a POST request to https://graph.facebook.com/arjun/feed:

curl -F 'access_token=...' \
     -F 'message=Hello, Arjun. I like this new API.' \
     https://graph.facebook.com/arjun/feed

• Q1: is this a javascript or php ?
• Q2: I don't see "curl -F" function reference nowhere, can someone pls show me one ?

Many thanks ~

Answer 1

curl (or cURL) is a command-line tool for accessing URLs.

Documentation: http://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html

In this example, they are simply sending a POST to https://graph.facebook.com/arjun/feed. The -F is defining parameters to be submitted with the POST.

This is not javascript or php. You can use curl in php, although any POST to that address with those parameters will accomplish what the example is demonstrating.

To do this in javascript, you would create a form and then submit it:

var form = document.createElement("form");
form.setAttribute("method", "post");
form.setAttribute("action", "https://graph.facebook.com/arjun/feed");

var tokenField = document.createElement("input");
tokenField.setAttribute("type", "hidden");
tokenField.setAttribute("name", "access_token");
tokenField.setAttribute("value", token);

var msgField = document.createElement("input");
msgField.setAttribute("type", "hidden");
msgField.setAttribute("name", "message");
msgField.setAttribute("value", "Hello, Arjun. I like this new API.");

form.appendChild(hiddenField);

document.body.appendChild(form);
form.submit();

Using jQuery, it's a lot simpler:

$.post("https://graph.facebook.com/arjun/feed", { 
    access_token: token, 
    message: "Hello, Arjun. I like this new API."
});