For future reference:

I needed to simulate a slow connection for testing an HTTP file upload, time the results, and see how reliable it was. Turns out it’s all doable with curl using the right set of incantations. Here they are:

curl -F file=@/tmp/sample-large-image.jpg -F some_parameter=1027504 \

    -u myusername:mypassword -w "\nTIME: %{time_total}\n" \

    --limit-rate 10k http://somewebsite.com/api/upload/

What this is saying is:

• Upload the file /tmp/sample-large-image.jpg . Note the “@” symbol – that’s what tells curl this his a file upload.
• Set the parameter some_parameter to 1027504
• Use HTTP basic auth to login, with user “myusername” and password “mypassword”
• Include the word “TIME” followed by how long the upload took in the output
• Limit the upload bandwidth to 10k bytes per second

curl continues to amaze with its flexibility.