curl-curl/docs/libcurl/opts/CURLOPT_SSLKEY.md
Daniel Stenberg 08a3e8e19a
TLS: remove support for Secure Transport and BearSSL
These libraries do not support TLS 1.3 and have been marked for removal
for over a year. We want to help users select a TLS dependency that is
future-proof and reliable, and not supporting TLS 1.3 in 2025 does not
infer confidence. Users who build libcurl are likely to be served better
and get something more future-proof with a TLS library that supports
1.3.

Closes #16677
2025-06-11 07:54:19 +02:00

1.7 KiB

c SPDX-License-Identifier Title Section Source See-also Protocol TLS-backend Added-in
Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. curl CURLOPT_SSLKEY 3 libcurl
CURLOPT_SSLCERT (3)
CURLOPT_SSLKEYTYPE (3)
CURLOPT_SSLKEY_BLOB (3)
TLS
OpenSSL
mbedTLS
Schannel
wolfSSL
7.9.3

NAME

CURLOPT_SSLKEY - private key file for TLS and SSL client cert

SYNOPSIS

#include <curl/curl.h>

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_SSLKEY, char *keyfile);

DESCRIPTION

Pass a pointer to a null-terminated string as parameter. The string should be the filename of your private key. The default format is "PEM" and can be changed with CURLOPT_SSLKEYTYPE(3).

(Windows) This option is ignored by the Schannel SSL backend because it expects the private key to be already present in the key-chain or PKCS#12 file containing the certificate.

The application does not have to keep the string around after setting this option.

Using this option multiple times makes the last set string override the previous ones. Set it to NULL to disable its use again.

DEFAULT

NULL

%PROTOCOLS%

EXAMPLE

int main(void)
{
  CURL *curl = curl_easy_init();
  if(curl) {
    CURLcode res;
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://example.com/");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_SSLCERT, "client.pem");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_SSLKEY, "key.pem");
    curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_KEYPASSWD, "s3cret");
    res = curl_easy_perform(curl);
    curl_easy_cleanup(curl);
  }
}

%AVAILABILITY%

RETURN VALUE

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

CURLE_OK (0) means everything was OK, non-zero means an error occurred, see libcurl-errors(3).