Developer Tools·4 min read

How to Convert cURL to Python, Fetch, or Axios

Every API doc gives you a curl example, and almost no project actually ships curl. Sooner or later you need to know how to convert curl to python, or to fetch for the browser, or to axios for a Node service. You can do it by hand, flag by flag, or you can paste the command into the cURL to Code tool and read the result in all three languages at once. This guide walks through the conversion, the flags that trip people up, and the details worth checking before generated code goes anywhere near production.

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Why curl commands keep landing in your clipboard

The universal request format nobody deploys.

API documentation has standardized on curl. Stripe, GitHub, OpenAI, and nearly every internal wiki present endpoints as a curl one-liner, because it runs anywhere and spells out the entire request. That's great for testing and useless for shipping. Your actual codebase speaks JavaScript or Python, and retyping headers by hand is exactly where typos creep in.

The same thing happens inside teams. A colleague reproduces a bug, posts the failing command in Slack, and now you want that precise request inside a unit test. Translating it mechanically, flag by flag, is the boring kind of work a tool should do for you.

From DevTools copy as cURL to code you can commit

Capturing a real browser request in two clicks.

Open the Network panel in Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, right click any request, and choose Copy as cURL. The browser hands you the complete request: method, URL, every header, cookies, and the body. Paste that into the input box and the fetch, axios, and Python tabs fill in immediately.

One warning about this workflow: DevTools copies everything the browser sent, including a pile of sec-fetch and cookie headers your script doesn't need. Delete the noise in the input box and watch the generated code shrink in real time, since the output re-renders on every keystroke.

How to convert curl to python requests, worked through

A small authenticated GET, start to finish.

Take this command: curl https://api.example.com/v1/orders -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_51abc" -H "Accept: application/json". Paste it in and open the Python tab.

The output reads: import requests, then res = requests.get("https://api.example.com/v1/orders", headers={"Authorization": "Bearer sk_test_51abc", "Accept": "application/json"}), then print(res.json()). Three lines, ready to run.

Notice what the converter decided for you. There was no -X flag, so the method defaulted to GET and became requests.get. Each -H pair turned into one entry in the headers dictionary. Had the command carried a -d payload, the method would have flipped to POST and the body would appear as a data argument in the call.

Reading curl flags so you can sanity-check the output

Four flags cover most commands you'll meet. -X, or --request, sets the HTTP method. -H, or --header, adds one header per use. -d, along with --data, --data-raw, and --data-binary, attaches a request body. And -u encodes a username and password pair into a Basic Authorization header, which the converter computes for you the same way curl would.

Getting comfortable reading curl flags pays off beyond any single tool, because you'll spot immediately when a command depends on something a simple parser won't carry across, like multipart form uploads or automatic decompression.

Conversion slip-ups that produce broken requests

Most failed conversions trace back to one of a handful of habits:

Trusting that every flag survived. Cookie jars (-b), multipart uploads (--form), and --compressed aren't parsed here, so commands relying on them need manual follow-up.
Missing the silent GET to POST switch. Any -d flag implies POST in curl, and the generated code mirrors that even though you never typed -X POST.
Pasting a Windows-style command. cmd.exe line continuations use ^ instead of backslashes, and the parser expects the Unix form, so join the command onto one line first.
Committing credentials. The Bearer token from your paste lands verbatim in the output, so move it into an environment variable before the snippet leaves your machine.
Sending JSON as a raw data string when your Python endpoint expects the json= argument. Check which Content-Type the API wants and adjust the call accordingly.

Getting more from the cURL to Code tool

Convert one canonical command per endpoint, then parameterize it in your own code, rather than converting a dozen variations of the same request. The parsing is deterministic, so identical input always yields identical output, which keeps diffs clean when an API doc changes and you re-convert.

Before pointing generated code at production, run it against an echo service and compare what arrives with what the original command sent. Thirty seconds of verification beats an afternoon spent hunting a header that got trimmed.

Where conversion ends and inspection begins

This converter translates requests; it doesn't look inside them. When the copied command carries a Bearer token, paste that token into the JWT Decoder to see its claims and expiry before you build tests around it. If a -u flag produced a Basic Authorization header, the Base64 Encoder / Decoder shows exactly what got encoded. And when the request runs but the response surprises you, the HTTP Status Codes table explains what the number coming back is trying to tell you.