How To Access Data With cURL And Wget

When using cURL or Wget to access data over HTTP from a web server configured for Earthdata Login authentication.

Step-by-step guide

1. Make sure you have authorized the application from which you are downloading data (see How To Pre-authorize an application). The application website should also have instructions on how to do this.
   
   
2. Configure your username and password for authentication using a .netrc file
   
     > cd ~
  > touch .netrc
  > echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login uid_goes_here password password_goes_here" > .netrc
  > chmod 0600 .netrc
   
   where uid_goes_here is your Earthdata Login username and password_goes_here is your Earthdata Login password. Note that some password characters can cause problems. A backslash or space anywhere in your password will need to be escaped with an additional backslash. Similarly, if you use a '#' as the first character of your password, it will also need to be escaped with a preceding backslash. Depending on your environment, the use of double-quotes " may be turned into "smart-quotes" automatically. We recommend turning this feature off. Some users have found that the double quotes are not supported by their systems. Some users have found that the  > is aliased to >> on some machines. This will append the text instead of overwrite the text. We recommend checking your ~/.netrc file to ensure it only has one line. 
   
   If your uid is some_user and your password is ABCdef123! this line should look like:
   > echo "machine urs.earthdata.nasa.gov login some_user password ABCdef123!" > .netrc
   
   
3. Create a cookie file. This will be used to persist sessions across individual cURL/Wget calls, making it more efficient.
   
     > cd ~
  > touch .urs_cookies
   
   
4. Download your data.
   
   Using cURL:
   
     > curl -b ~/.urs_cookies -c ~/.urs_cookies -L -n http://server/path
   
   or Wget:
   
     > wget --load-cookies ~/.urs_cookies --save-cookies ~/.urs_cookies --keep-session-cookies http://server/path
   
   Note that you may supply additional options to control the output location.