Get a Single Header with cURL

By  on  

Debugging third party apps can be difficult for a variety of reasons.  You take for granted that the third party has not only properly coded their app but that their server is also serving files properly.  As more a developer than a sysadmin I tend to spend a long time on the code before I ensure the server stuff is correct.  One mistake often made on the server side is not sending correct Content-Type headers with content, especially audio and video files, and that can cause a real problem for the app or codec trying to do something with the content.  These days I check response headers before I do anything else.

Getting complete response headers with cURL is easy:

#  Get response headers
curl -I https://davidwalsh.name

#  Result:
#  HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
#  Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2016 17:29:51 GMT
#  Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
#  Connection: keep-alive
#  Set-Cookie: __cfduid=dab1e532a38b35ce7d764344217ddd8dc1454520590; expires=Thu, 02-Feb-17 17:29:50 GMT; path=/; domain=.davidwalsh.name; HttpOnly
#  Location: https://davidwalsh.name/
#  Cache-Control: max-age=1
#  Expires: Wed, 03 Feb 2016 17:29:52 GMT
#  Vary: Accept-Encoding
#  Server: cloudflare-nginx
#  CF-RAY: 26efdc3d2aa841ef-MSP

But that's a lot of info to sift through if you only want the one header.  Here's how you can retrieve just one header:

#  Get single header only
#  curl {url} -I | grep -Fi {header_name}
curl https://davidwalsh.name -I | grep -Fi Content-Type

#  Result:
#  Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

With the extra grep above you'll only get the one header back.  Simple!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster?

    How is it possible that JavaScript-based animation has secretly always been as fast — or faster — than CSS transitions? And, how is it possible that Adobe and Google consistently release media-rich mobile sites that rival the performance of native apps? This article serves as a point-by-point...

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Image Reflection with jQuery and MooTools

    One subtle detail that can make a big difference on any web design is the use of image reflections. Using them too often can become obnoxious but using reflections on large, "masthead" images is a classy enhancement. Unfortunately creating image reflections within your...

  • By
    GitHub-Style Sliding Links

    GitHub seems to change a lot but not really change at all, if that makes any sense; the updates come often but are always fairly small. I spotted one of the most recent updates on the pull request page. Links to long branch...

Discussion

  1. Lev Nar

    this is the best answer that I found with my problem, but the only question i have is how to do this is curl php

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!