Can I set a default hostname for curl?

Question

I would like to reduce the keystrokes when I use curl to test web services on my workstation.

Is there a way to set a default hostname of 'localhost:3000' into ~/.curlrc so the following will work?

curl /foo.json

Answer 1

On Unix – shell functions:

cu() { curl "http://localhost:3000/$1"; }

cu foo.json would be translated to curl http://localhost:3000/foo.json.

Downside: needs far more code to support options (curl -I and stuff), but that can be achieved too.

Answer 2

export h=http://example.com
curl $h/foo.json

Put the export statement in your ~.profile