How to display request headers with command line curl

Question

Command line curl can display response header by using -D option  but I want to see what request header it is sending  How can I do that

User · Answer

The verbose option is handy  but if you want to see everything that curl does  including the HTTP body that is transmitted  and not just the headers   I suggest using one of the below options    --trace-ascii -   stdout --trace-ascii output file txt   file

User · Answer

If you want more alternatives  You can try installing a Modern command line HTTP client like httpie which is available for most of the Operating Systems with package managers like brew  apt-get  pip  yum etc  eg - For OSX  brew install httpie   Then you can use it on command line with various options  http GET https   www google com

User · Answer

curl s -v or --verbose option shows the HTTP request headers  among other things  Here is some sample output     curl -v http   google com    About to connect   to google com port 80   0      Trying 66 102 7 104    connected   Connected to google com  66 102 7 104  port 80   0   gt  GET   HTTP 1 1  gt  User-Agent  curl 7 16 4  i386-apple-darwin9 0  libcurl 7 16 4 OpenSSL 0 9 7l zlib 1 2 3  gt  Host  google com  gt  Accept       gt    lt  HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently  lt  Location  http   www google com   lt  Content-Type  text html  charset UTF-8  lt  Date  Thu  15 Jul 2010 06 06 52 GMT  lt  Expires  Sat  14 Aug 2010 06 06 52 GMT  lt  Cache-Control  public  max-age 2592000  lt  Server  gws  lt  Content-Length  219  lt  X-XSS-Protection  1  mode block  lt    lt HTML gt  lt HEAD gt  lt meta http-equiv  content-type  content  text html charset utf-8  gt   lt TITLE gt 301 Moved lt  TITLE gt  lt  HEAD gt  lt BODY gt   lt H1 gt 301 Moved lt  H1 gt  The document has moved  lt A HREF  http   www google com   gt here lt  A gt    lt  BODY gt  lt  HTML gt    Connection  0 to host google com left intact   Closing connection  0

User · Answer

You get a nice header output with the following command    curl -L -v -s -o  dev null google de    -L  --location follow redirects -v  --verbose  more output  indicates the direction -s  --silent   don t show a progress bar -o  --output  dev null don t show received body   Or the shorter version    curl -Lvso  dev null google de   Results in     Rebuilt URL to  google de      Trying 2a00 1450 4008 802  2003      Connected to google de  2a00 1450 4008 802  2003  port 80   0   gt  GET   HTTP 1 1  gt  Host  google de  gt  User-Agent  curl 7 43 0  gt  Accept       gt   lt  HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently  lt  Location  http   www google de   lt  Content-Type  text html  charset UTF-8  lt  Date  Fri  12 Aug 2016 15 45 36 GMT  lt  Expires  Sun  11 Sep 2016 15 45 36 GMT  lt  Cache-Control  public  max-age 2592000  lt  Server  gws  lt  Content-Length  218  lt  X-XSS-Protection  1  mode block  lt  X-Frame-Options  SAMEORIGIN  lt    Ignoring the response-body    218 bytes data    Connection  0 to host google de left intact   Issue another request to this URL   http   www google de       Trying 2a00 1450 4008 800  2003      Connected to www google de  2a00 1450 4008 800  2003  port 80   1   gt  GET   HTTP 1 1  gt  Host  www google de  gt  User-Agent  curl 7 43 0  gt  Accept       gt   lt  HTTP 1 1 200 OK  lt  Date  Fri  12 Aug 2016 15 45 36 GMT  lt  Expires  -1  lt  Cache-Control  private  max-age 0  lt  Content-Type  text html  charset ISO-8859-1  lt  P3P  CP  This is not a P3P policy  See https   www google com support accounts answer 151657 hl en for more info    lt  Server  gws  lt  X-XSS-Protection  1  mode block  lt  X-Frame-Options  SAMEORIGIN  lt  Set-Cookie  NID 84 Z0WT INFoDbf 0FIe uHqzL9mf3DMSQs0mHyTEDAQOGY2sOrQaKVgN2domEw8frXvo4I3x3QVLqCH340HME3t1-6gNu8R-ArecuaneSURXNxSXYMhW2kBIE8Duty- w7  expires Sat  11-Feb-2017 15 45 36 GMT  path    domain  google de  HttpOnly  lt  Accept-Ranges  none  lt  Vary  Accept-Encoding  lt  Transfer-Encoding  chunked  lt     11080 bytes data    Connection  1 to host www google de left intact   As you can see curl outputs both the outgoing and the incoming headers and skips the bodydata althought telling you how big the body is   Additionally for every line the direction is indicated so that it is easy to read  I found it particular useful to trace down long chains of redirects

User · Answer

I had to overcome this problem myself  when debugging web applications  -v is great  but a little too verbose for my tastes  This is the  bash-only  solution I came up with   curl -v http   example com  2 gt   gt  sed      d     This works because the output from -v is sent to stderr  not stdout  By redirecting this to a subshell  we can sed it to remove lines that start with    Since the real output does not pass through the subshell  it is not affected  Using a subshell is a little heavy-handed  but it s the easiest way to redirect stderr to another command   As I noted  I m only using this for testing  so it works fine for me

User · Answer

A popular answer for displaying response headers  but OP asked about request headers   curl -s -D - -o  dev null http   example com    -s   Avoid showing progress bar -D -   Dump headers to a file  but - sends it to stdout -o  dev null   Ignore response body   This is better than -I as it doesn t send a HEAD request  which can produce different results   It s better than -v because you don t need so many hacks to un-verbose it

User · Answer

I believe the command line switch you are looking for to pass to curl is -I   Example usage     curl -I http   heatmiser counterhack com zone-5-15614E3A-CEA7-4A28-A85A-D688CC418287   HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently Date  Sat  29 Dec 2012 15 22 05 GMT Server  Apache Location  http   heatmiser counterhack com zone-5-15614E3A-CEA7-4A28-A85A-D688CC418287  Content-Type  text html  charset iso-8859-1   Additionally  if you encounter a response HTTP status code of 301  you might like to also pass a -L argument switch to tell curl to follow URL redirects  and  in this case  print the headers of all pages  including the URL redirects   illustrated below     curl -I -L http   heatmiser counterhack com zone-5-15614E3A-CEA7-4A28-A85A-D688CC418287 HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently Date  Sat  29 Dec 2012 15 22 13 GMT Server  Apache Location  http   heatmiser counterhack com zone-5-15614E3A-CEA7-4A28-A85A-D688CC418287  Content-Type  text html  charset iso-8859-1  HTTP 1 1 302 Found Date  Sat  29 Dec 2012 15 22 13 GMT Server  Apache Set-Cookie  UID b8c37e33defde51cf91e1e03e51657da Location  noaccess php Content-Type  text html  HTTP 1 1 200 OK Date  Sat  29 Dec 2012 15 22 13 GMT Server  Apache Content-Type  text html

User · Answer

the -v option for curl is too verbose in the error output which contains the leading   status line  or  gt  request head field  or  lt  response head field   to get only the request head field   curl -v -sS www stackoverflow com 2 gt  amp 1  gt  dev null   grep   gt     cut -c1-2 --complement   to get only the request head field   curl -v -sS www stackoverflow com 2 gt  amp 1  gt  dev null   grep   lt     cut -c1-2 --complement   or to dump it into  tmp test txt file with the -D option  curl -D  tmp test txt -sS www stackoverflow com  gt   dev null   in order to filter the -v output  you should direct the error output to terminal and the std output to  dev null  the -s option is to forbid the progress metering

User · Answer

A command like the one below will show three sections  request headers  response headers and data  separated by CRLF   It avoids technical information and syntactical noise added by curl   curl -vs www stackoverflow com 2 gt  amp 1   sed       d   bytes data   d  s  gt      s  lt        The command will produce the following output   GET   HTTP 1 1 Host  www stackoverflow com User-Agent  curl 7 54 0 Accept       HTTP 1 1 301 Moved Permanently Content-Type  text html  charset UTF-8 Location  https   stackoverflow com  Content-Length  149 Accept-Ranges  bytes Date  Wed  16 Jan 2019 20 28 56 GMT Via  1 1 varnish Connection  keep-alive X-Served-By  cache-bma1622-BMA X-Cache  MISS X-Cache-Hits  0 X-Timer  S1547670537 588756 VS0 VE105 Vary  Fastly-SSL X-DNS-Prefetch-Control  off Set-Cookie  prov e4b211f7-ae13-dad3-9720-167742a5dff8  domain  stackoverflow com  expires Fri  01-Jan-2055 00 00 00 GMT  path    HttpOnly   lt head gt  lt title gt Document Moved lt  title gt  lt  head gt   lt body gt  lt h1 gt Object Moved lt  h1 gt This document may be found  lt a HREF  https   stackoverflow com   gt here lt  a gt  lt  body gt    Description    -vs - add headers  -v  but remove progress bar  -s  2 gt  amp 1 - combine stdout and stderr into single stdout sed - edit response produced by curl using the commands below      d - remove lines starting with       technical info   bytes data   d - remove lines ending with  bytes data    technical info  s  gt     - remove      prefix s  lt     - remove   lt    prefix

[curl] How to display request headers with command line curl

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