IPFS

IPFS is theInter-Planetary File System. curl supports IPFS only via anHTTP gateway. It means that it understands IPFS URLs when given to it, butyou must also provide a working gateway URL for curl to use to retrieve thecontent. curl does not speak IPFS natively.

Gateway

The--ipfs-gateway lets the user specify the IPFS HTTP gateway URL. Like this:

curl --ipfs-gateway http://localhost:8080 ipfs://bafybeigagd5nmnn2iys2f3d/

If you opt to go for a remote gateway you should be aware that you completelytrust the gateway. This is fine in local gateways as you host it yourself.With remote gateways there could potentially be a malicious actor returningyou data that does not match the request you made, inspect or even interferewith the request. You might not notice this when getting IPFS using curl.

If the--ipfs-gateway option is not used, curl checks theIPFS_GATEWAYenvironment variable for guidance and if not set, the~/.ipfs/gateway filethat can be used to identify the gateway.

IPFS support was first added to curl in version 8.4.0.