CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING(3)

💅 CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING(3) ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING — it lives in the Library Functions Manual and it's genuinely the switch that decides whether libcurl bothers decoding your HTTP content or just hands you the raw vibes. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING — HTTP content decoding control. that's it. that's the whole thing. she's a control freak and we love her for it 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <curl/curl.h>

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING,
                          long enabled);

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so you pass a long in and that's literally you telling libcurl how to act on content decoding. main character decision energy:

• if it's set to zero, content decoding is disabled 🙈
• if it's set to 1, it's enabled ✨

and here's the part that lowkey trips everyone up: libcurl has no default content decoding — none, zero, nada. if you actually want decoding to do anything you gotta go use CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3) for that. it's giving "you have to ask nicely first" 🫶

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🎀 DEFAULT 🎀

1 — yeah she's enabled out the gate, periodt.

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🌈 PROTOCOLS 🌈

this functionality affects http only. no https erasure here, it just means http. iykyk 🧚

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🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode result;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_HTTP_CONTENT_DECODING, 0L);
    result = curl_easy_perform(curl);
  }
}

look at her go — setting that 0L and turning decoding off completely. icon behavior 👑

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⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

added in curl 7.16.2. vintage but still serving 💜

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🍓 RETURN VALUE 🍓

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

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK 😌 — anything non-zero means an error occurred, so go check libcurl-errors(3) and figure out what went sideways 😭

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3)
• CURLOPT_DEBUGFUNCTION(3)
• CURLOPT_STDERR(3)

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ngl the whole trick is: this flag is the on/off switch, CURLOPT_ACCEPT_ENCODING(3) is the thing that actually makes decoding possible. don't @ me, that's just what the page says 💀

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mwah, that's the whole page bestie — written by libcurl, dated 2026-10-12, and you slayed reading all the way to the bottom 🫶✨