Getting only response header from HTTP POST using curl

Question

One can request only the headers using HTTP HEAD  as option -I in curl 1      curl -I     Lengthy HTML response bodies are a pain to get in command-line  so I d like to get only the header as feedback for my POST requests  However  HEAD and POST are two different methods   How do I get curl to display only response headers to a POST request

User · Answer

While the other answers have not worked for me in all situations  the best solution I could find  working with POST as well   taken from here   curl -vs  https   some-site com  1 gt   dev null

User · Answer

headcurl cmd  windows version   curl -sSkv -o NUL    2 gt  amp 1    I don t want a progress bar -s   but I do want errors -S   not bothering about valid https certificates -k   getting high verbosity -v  this is about troubleshooting  is it     no output  in a clean way   oh  and I want to forward stderr to stdout  so I can grep against the whole thing  since most or all output comes in stderr     means  pass on all parameters to this script   well https   stackoverflow com a 980372 444255   well usually that s just one parameter  the url you are testing   real-world example  on troubleshooting proxy issues    C  depot gt headcurl google ch   grep -i -e http -e cache   Hostname was NOT found in DNS cache GET HTTP   google ch  HTTP 1 1 HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently Location  http   www google ch  Cache-Control  public  max-age 2592000 X-Cache  HIT from company somewhere ch X-Cache-Lookup  HIT from company somewhere ch 1234     Linux version  for your  bash aliases    bash rc   alias headcurl  curl -sSkv -o  dev null     2 gt  amp 1

User · Answer

-D  --dump-header  lt file gt         Write the protocol headers to the specified file          This  option  is handy to use when you want to store the headers        that a HTTP site sends to you  Cookies from  the  headers  could        then  be  read  in  a  second  curl  invocation by using the -b         --cookie option  The -c  --cookie-jar option is however a better        way to store cookies    and  -S  --show-error        When used with -s  --silent  it makes curl show an error message if it fails    and   -L --location        HTTP HTTPS  If the server reports that the requested page has moved to a different location  indicated with a Location  header and a 3XX response       code   this option will make curl redo the request on the new place  If used together with -i --include or -I --head  headers from  all  requested       pages  will  be  shown   When authentication is used  curl only sends its credentials to the initial host  If a redirect takes curl to a different       host  it won   t be able to intercept the user password  See also --location-trusted on how to change this  You can limit the amount of redirects to       follow by using the --max-redirs option         When curl follows a redirect and the request is not a plain GET  for example POST or PUT   it will do the following request with a GET if the HTTP       response was 301  302  or 303  If the response code was any other 3xx code  curl will re-send the following  request  using  the  same  unmodified       method    from the man page   so   curl -sSL -D - www acooke org -o  dev null   follows redirects  dumps the headers to stdout and sends the data to  dev null  that s a GET  not a POST  but you can do the same thing with a POST - just add whatever option you re already using for POSTing data   note the - after the -D which indicates that the output  file  is stdout

User · Answer

The other answers require the response body to be downloaded  But there s a way to make a POST request that will only fetch the header   curl -s -I -X POST http   www google com   An -I by itself performs a HEAD request which can be overridden by -X POST to perform a POST  or any other  request and still only get the header data

User · Answer

Much easier      this is what I use to avoid Shortlink tracking      is the following   curl -IL http   bit ly in-the-shadows      which also follows links

User · Answer

Maybe it is little bit of an extreme  but I am using this super short version   curl -svo   lt URL gt    Explanation   -v print debug information  which does include headers   -o  send web page data  which we want to ignore  to a certain file    in this case  which is a directory and is an invalid destination and makes the output to be ignored   -s no progress bar  no error information  otherwise you would see Warning  Failed to create the file    Is a directory   warning  result always fails  in terms of error code  if reachable or not   Do not use in  say  conditional statements in shell scripting

User · Answer

The Following command displays extra informations  curl -X POST http   httpbin org post -v  gt   dev null   You can ask server to send just HEAD  instead of full response  curl -X HEAD -I http   httpbin org    Note  In some cases  server may send different headers for POST and HEAD  But in almost all cases headers are same

User · Answer

For long response bodies  and various other similar situations   the solution I use is always to pipe to less  so  curl -i https   api github com users   less   or   curl -s -D - https   api github com users   less   will do the job

[post] Getting only response header from HTTP POST using curl

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