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?

score 1521 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 02 '23 at 04:50

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 will change the call to a HEAD call which will fetch response overhead only, without the body.

Note: %{http_code} returns on first line of HTTP payload (available variables for the -w option on the curl documentation page)

i.e.:

curl -s -o /dev/null -I -w "%{http_code}" http://www.example.org/

score 976 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 09 '21 at 21:48

976

This should work for you if the web server is able to respond to HEAD requests (this will not perform a GET request):

curl -I http://www.example.org

As an addition, to let cURL follow redirects (3xx statuses) add -L.

edited Oct 09 '21 at 21:48

Wouter

139
1
8

answered Apr 18 '11 at 10:56

pberlijn

10,410

score 566 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 04 '12 at 20:45

566

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.

answered Dec 04 '12 at 20:45

Cyril David

5,677

score 295 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 04 '14 at 20:00

295

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

edited Nov 04 '14 at 20:00

Dennis

472

answered May 03 '12 at 04:28

Enrico Susatyo

3,626

score 97 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 15 '24 at 16:44

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.

score 63 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 05 '14 at 18:18

63

Redefine curl output:

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

Can be used with any request type.

answered Aug 05 '14 at 18:18

Grzegorz Luczywo

739

mahatmanich · Answer 7 · 2018-04-25T09:12:56.600

59

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

edited Apr 25 '18 at 09:12

answered Feb 08 '17 at 10:44

mahatmanich

715

score 22 · Answer 8 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

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[.

score 17 · Answer 9 · edited Apr 10 '17 at 19:33

17

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

edited Apr 10 '17 at 19:33

OneCricketeer

220

answered Jul 15 '15 at 20:08

Filip Spiridonov

271

score 15 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 07 '16 at 08:36

15

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]'

answered Jan 07 '16 at 08:36

zafar142003

251

score 8 · Answer 11 · edited Nov 21 '16 at 13:18

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.

score 8 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 01 '18 at 17:21

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

score 6 · Answer 13 · answered Jun 23 '16 at 10:37

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

srana · Answer 14 · 2017-12-12T16:39:46.230

6

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

This will return the following information:

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

edited Dec 12 '17 at 16:39

answered Mar 08 '17 at 05:12

srana

61

Jaakko · Answer 15 · 2019-10-08T08:19:58.580

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.

score 3 · Answer 16 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 13:48

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.

score -1 · Answer 17 · answered Apr 14 '21 at 04:44

$ curl -kv https://www.example.org 2>&1 | grep -i 'HTTP/1.1 ' | awk '{print $3}'| sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//'

2>&1: error is stored in output for parsing
grep: filter the response code line from output
awk: filters out the response code from response code line
sed: removes any leading white spaces

score -1 · Answer 18 · answered Jul 14 '22 at 10:30

-1

There is another way by using Powershell command which is alias to curl.exe Just type the following:

(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://your.website).StatusCode

answered Jul 14 '22 at 10:30

Dmitrii L

1

score -1 · Answer 19 · answered Sep 14 '22 at 18:24

-1

In Windows PowerShell:

curl https:\\www.example.org -Method HEAD

It's really just an alias for Invoke-WebRequest though.

answered Sep 14 '22 at 18:24

Kebman

525

Getting curl to output HTTP status code?

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