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?
![From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!]()
My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...
![Chris Coyier’s Favorite CodePen Demos]()
David asked me if I'd be up for a guest post picking out some of my favorite Pens from CodePen. A daunting task! There are so many! I managed to pick a few though that have blown me away over the past few months. If you...
![MooTools Link Fading]()
We all know that we can set a different link color (among other properties) on the hover event, but why not show a little bit more dynamism by making the original color fade to the next? Using MooTools 1.2, you can achieve that effect.
The MooTools...
![Use Custom Missing Image Graphics Using MooTools]()
Missing images on your website can make you or your business look completely amateur.
Unfortunately sometimes an image gets deleted or corrupted without your knowledge.
You'd agree with me that IE's default "red x" icon looks awful, so why not use
your own missing image graphic?
The MooTools JavaScript
Note that...
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’