I'm using curl
at the command line on Linux to issue HTTP requests. The response bodies are printed to standard out, which is fine, but I can't see from the man page how to get curl to print the HTTP status code from the response (404, 403 etc). Is this possible?
This should work for you if the web server is able to respond to HEAD requests (this will not perform a GET
):
curl -I http://www.example.org
As an addition, to let cURL follow redirects (3xx statuses) add -L.
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186NB:
curl -I
does a HEAD HTTP request, which can be problematic for testing the HTTP status code for some web application servers and services – Jay Taylor Sep 6 '12 at 17:32 -
24And to get just the status number, pipe it to
head -n 1|cut -d$' ' -f2
– Benubird Jul 17 '13 at 11:33 -
44Don't forget to redirect curl's stderr:
curl -I http://www.example.org 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2
. Add -L to curl if you need the final status after redirects. – Aaron Blenkush Jul 24 '14 at 21:16 -
1Following the redirect after only doing a HEAD request may cause interesting behavior, depending on how the app is programmed. – Scott McIntyre Sep 21 '15 at 21:16
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51
A more specific way to print out just the HTTP status code is something along the lines of:
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://www.example.org/
A lot easier to work with in scripts, as it doesn't require any parsing :-)
The parameter -I
might be added to improve response load performance. This will change the call to a HEAD
call which will fetch response overhead only, without the body.
Note: %{http_code}
returns on first line of HTTP payload
i.e.:
curl -s -o /dev/null -I -w "%{http_code}" http://www.example.org/
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70-w "%{http_code}" is the bit that prints the status code. You can add a newline or two in there to separate the code from the body (-w "\n\n%{http_code}\n") – Jeffrey Martinez Jan 11 '14 at 8:33
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14Wow, this
/dev/null
thing even works in the Windows version of curl that I'm using. – Uwe Keim Jan 30 '15 at 6:53 -
3I believe this downloads the entire file even though it all goes to /dev/null, so not ideal for checking the status code for huge files.
httping -c 1 -s -G -m
issues a GET and doesn't download the whole file, although I realise this question is specifically about curl. – RomanSt Dec 13 '15 at 23:59 -
63FYI:
-s
= Don't show download progress,-o /dev/null
= don't display the body,-w "%{http_code}"
= Write http response code to stdout after exit. – Ajedi32 Jul 19 '16 at 16:59 -
3
You can print the status code, in addition to all the headers by doing the following:
curl -i http://example.org
The good thing about -i
is that it works with -X POST
as well.
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60
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13Maybe obvious, but
-i
does work with any HTTP method, not justGET
andPOST
... :) – mac Oct 20 '14 at 10:35 -
5the best answer as it makes curl output both headers and body, making it suitable for most of the tasks when used in a script – Display Name Aug 31 '15 at 19:52
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11This is the best answer, and can be used in conjunction with
-s
(don't show progress meter or error messages) and-S
(do show error messages after all) – Jonathan Hartley Feb 23 '17 at 19:10 -
If you want to see the header as well as the result you can use the verbose option:
curl -v http://www.example.org
curl --verbose http://www.example.org
The status will appear in the header. E.g.
< Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 19:12:59 GMT
< Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
< Status: 422 Unprocessable Entity
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34+1 for pointing out the verbose flag provides the extra details. Great for testing REST apps. – MrOodles Oct 15 '12 at 20:37
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8
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1It even splits them in two different file outputs (http status details to stderr and response body to stdout) – phil294 Apr 30 '18 at 7:37
If you want to capture the HTTP status code in a variable, but still redirect the content to STDOUT, you must create two STDOUTs. You can do so with process substitution >() and command substitution $().
First, create a file descriptor 3
for your current process' STDOUT with exec 3>&1
.
Then, use curl's -o
option to redirect the response content to a temporary fifo using command substitution, and then within that command substitution, redirect output back to your current process STDOUT file descriptor 3
with -o >(cat >&3)
.
Putting it all together in bash
3.2.57(1)-release
(standard for macOS
):
# creates a new file descriptor 3 that redirects to 1 (STDOUT)
exec 3>&1
# Run curl in a separate command, capturing output of -w "%{http_code}" into HTTP_STATUS
# and sending the content to this command's STDOUT with -o >(cat >&3)
HTTP_STATUS=$(curl -w "%{http_code}" -o >(cat >&3) 'http://example.com')
Note that this doesn't work in /bin/sh
as SamK noted in the comments below.
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5
-
3
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1The output is in
STDOUT
, so you should be able to redirect output from the command to anywhere you like just like a regular command. I haven't tested this though. – Heath Borders Jul 21 '15 at 3:10 -
1
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1good answer, you can also redirect to a real file and cat it later if you want portability of shells – akostadinov Feb 8 '19 at 9:40
Redefine curl output:
curl -sw '%{http_code}' http://example.org
Can be used with any request type.
Status code ONLY
[0]$ curl -LI http://www.example.org -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' -s
[0]$ 200
All credit to this GIST
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This one works like a charm, specially when using curl between Docker containers. I use it like this in PHP:
exec("curl -LI "my service name"/"the file I'm looking the HTTP code for" -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' -s")
(e.g.:exec("curl -LI static/someimage.jpg -o [...]
where "static" is the service name defined in Docker Compose). Thanks! – Jimmy Adaro Aug 19 at 20:28
This is a painful curl --fail
limitation. From man curl
:
-f, --fail (HTTP) Fail silently (no output at all) on server errors
But there is no way to get both the non-zero return code AND the response body in stdout.
Based on pvandenberk's answer and this other very useful trick learned on SO, here is a workaround :
curl_with_error_code () {
_curl_with_error_code "$@" | sed '$d'
}
_curl_with_error_code () {
local curl_error_code http_code
exec 17>&1
http_code=$(curl --write-out '\n%{http_code}\n' "$@" | tee /dev/fd/17 | tail -n 1)
curl_error_code=$?
exec 17>&-
if [ $curl_error_code -ne 0 ]; then
return $curl_error_code
fi
if [ $http_code -ge 400 ] && [ $http_code -lt 600 ]; then
echo "HTTP $http_code" >&2
return 127
fi
}
This function behaves exactly as curl
, but will return 127 (a return code non-used by curl
) in case of a HTTP code in the range [400, 600[.
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3Agreed, not being able to see the error output is a painful limitation of the otherwise very handy --fail. How can you diagnose a REST api failure without seeing the error output? It's so unfortunate that the curl maintainer bagder stubbornly insists on not providing a --fail-but-show-error. github.com/curl/curl/issues/1978 – jamshid May 13 '18 at 23:33
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As stated in documentation, it doesn't work for 401 and 407 HTTP code :( – Logan Mzz Aug 29 '19 at 8:47
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2
This will send a request to url, get only the first line of the response, split it on blocks and select the second one.
It contains the response code
curl -I http://example.org 2>/dev/null | head -n 1 | cut -d$' ' -f2
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1Can you explain what this code does and how it addresses the problem given by the OP? Unexplained code can appear untrusted and dangerous to users. – bwDraco Jul 16 '15 at 1:58
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2Sure, we send a request to url, get only the first line of the response, split it on blocks and select the second one. It contains the response code that OP is looking for. – Filip Spiridonov Jul 20 '15 at 22:01
For a POST request, the following worked:
curl -w 'RESP_CODE:%{response_code}' -s -X POST --data '{"asda":"asd"}' http://example.com --header "Content-Type:application/json"|grep -o 'RESP_CODE:[1-4][0-9][0-9]'
Use the following cURL command and pipe it to grep like so:
$ curl -I -s -L http://example.com/v3/get_list | grep "HTTP/1.1"
Here's what each flag does:
-I
: Show only response headers-s
: Silent - Don't show progress bar-L
: FollowLocation:
headers
Here is a link to HTTP status codes.
Run from the command line. This curl runs in silent mode, follows any redirects, get the HTTP headers. grep will print the HTTP status code to standard output.
Here is some curl command that is using GET
and that returns the HTTP code.
curl -so /dev/null -w '%{response_code}' http://www.example.org
Please remember that the approach below is using HEAD
, which is faster but it may not work well with some web less compliant HTTP servers.
curl -I http://www.example.org
curl -so -i /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://www.any_example.com
This will return the following information:
- response data, if any data is returned by API like error
- status code
-
This doesn't follow redirects. This existing answer is better superuser.com/a/442395/475508 – OneCricketeer Apr 10 '17 at 18:16
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An example of how to use the response codes. I use this to re-download Geolite databases only if they have changed (-z
) & also following redirects (-L
):
url=http://example.com/file.gz
file=$(basename $url)
response=$(curl -L -s -o $file -z $file $url -w "%{http_code}")
case "$response" in
200) do_something ;;
301) do_something ;;
304) printf "Received: HTTP $response (file unchanged) ==> $url\n" ;;
404) printf "Received: HTTP $response (file not found) ==> $url\n" ;;
*) printf "Received: HTTP $response ==> $url\n" ;;
esac
Split output content to stdout
and HTTP status code to stderr
:
curl http://www.example.org -o >(cat >&1) -w "%{http_code}\n" 1>&2
If only HTTP status code is desired to stderr, --silent
can be used:
curl --silent http://www.example.org -o >(cat >&1) -w "%{http_code}\n" 1>&2
The desired stream can then be picked by redirecting unwanted one to /dev/null
:
$ (curl --silent http://www.example.org -o >(cat >&1) -w "%{http_code}" 1>&2) 1>/dev/null
200
$ (curl --silent http://www.example.org -o >(cat >&1) -w "%{http_code}" 1>&2) 2>/dev/null
<!doctype html>
...
Note that for the second redirection to behave as desired, we need to run the curl command in subshell.
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1
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@Bruno, I changed the example from superuser.com/revisions/1444693/2, as I think the
/tmp/out
/tmp/err
files can cause unexpected results if run parallel. – Jaakko Oct 8 '19 at 8:13
The OP wants to know the status code. Often when downloading a file you also want to get a feel of it's size so I'm using curl first to show status code and size of file and then shut off verbose and direct file to the place and name I want:
curl -R -s -S -w "\nhttp: %{http_code} %{size_download}\n" -o /Users/myfiles/the_local_name.html http://archive.onweb.com/the_online_name.html
Then I wait for the finishing of curl
wait ${!}
before I run the next command. The above when used in a script of many commands like above gives a nice response like:
http: 200 42824
http: 200 34728
http: 200 35452
Please note that -o in curl needs to be followed by the full path of the file + name of file. This allows you thusly to save files in a sensible name structure when you d/l them with curl. Also note that -s and -S used together silence the output but does show errors. Note also that -R tries to set the file timestamp to that of the web file.
My answer is based on what @pvandenberk originally suggested, but in addition it actually saves the file somewhere, instead of merely directing to /dev/null.
$ curl -kv https://www.example.org 2>&1 | grep -i 'HTTP/1.1 ' | awk '{print $3}'| sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//'
- 2>&1: error is stored in output for parsing
- grep: filter the response code line from output
- awk: filters out the response code from response code line
- sed: removes any leading white spaces
-i
flag, as incurl -i https://www.example.com/
, is probably what you want, as per superuser.com/a/514798/190188 – caw Mar 13 '17 at 3:10curl -IL http://www.example.com | grep "^HTTP\/"
? – St3an Feb 18 '19 at 7:46