Getting curl to output HTTP status code?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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 parameter just request for status/headers of response, without download response 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/

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

Redefine curl output:

curl -sw '%{http_code}' http://example.org

Can be used with any request type.

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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[.

Answer 9

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

Answer 10

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]'

Answer 11

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: Follow Location: 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.

Answer 12

curl -so -i /dev/null -w "%{http_code}"  http://www.any_example.com

This will return the following information:

1. response data, if any data is returned by API like error
2. status code

Answer 13

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

Answer 14

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

Answer 15

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.

Answer 16

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.