Use FURL to Retrieve Website Headers
It's important to know what headers your website and its files are communicating. For example, if your website is providing a 404 status, you're probably streaking toward your computer to fix the problem. Using the FURL library, you may retrieve website headers from the command line.
The Shell Script
furl http://davidwalsh.name
Simple and quick -- just like every shell directive.
The Sample Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:50:50 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6 X-Pingback: http://davidwalsh.name/xmlrpc.php Cache-Control: max-age=1, private, must-revalidate Expires: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:50:51 GMT Vary: Accept-Encoding Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Don't have FURL? Install it by scripting this:
sudo port install furl
How is this useful? I would use this to periodically (cron) check my website to make sure it was up. What would you use this for?
Discussion
Be Heard!
Share your thoughts with fellow developers of all skill levels! I want to hear from you!
I’d use it to retrieve the X-Pingback value and if it was included, I’d send a trackback. ;-)
Or, if you don’t fancy installing furl for this, you can do the same with curl (a powerful and flexible utility for doing performing requests) with the -I flag:
eg.
curl -I http://davidwalsh.name
(you probably have curl installed already)
to see the headers and the full response, use the verbose flag
curl -v http://davidwalsh.name
@adamnfish: Thanks for sharing that. On a side note, “adamnfish” sounds like a wacky morning FM radio show.
Not sure where sources are but the Debian package is at http://bertorello.ns0.it/debian/furl/
As already mentioned,
curl -I HOSTNAME
Has the same functionality but without installing something extra.
curl -I is good. This is another suggestion…
lwp-request -ed “http://lindesk.com/”
another trick is:
lynx -head http://davidwalsh.name
lynx is a linux textual browser
Dang! I should have read this sooner. I was itching to jump all over the “curl -I” suggestion. Everyone got here first!
alias furl=’curl -i -X HEAD’