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 https://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: https://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?
![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...
![Vibration API]()
Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user. One of those simple APIs the Vibration API. The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...
![MooTools: Set Style Per Media]()
I'd bet one of the most used MooTools methods is the setStyle()
method, which allows you to set CSS style declarations for an element. One of the limitations of MooTools' setStyle()
method is that it sets the specific style for all medias.
![Drag & Drop Elements to the Trash with MooTools 1.2]()
Everyone loves dragging garbage files from their desktop into their trash can. There's a certain amount of irony in doing something on your computer that you also do in real life. It's also a quick way to get rid of things. That's...
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’