http_headers []

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Flag	Description
-I, –head	Fetch the HTTP-header only
-v, –verbose	Fetching is more talkative. Used for debugging
-s, –silent	Silent or Quiet (Mute). Don't show progress meter or error messages
-i, –include	Header plus content
-X , –request	Specify a customer request when communicating with HTTP web server

Troubleshooting a website. You can replace http://website.com with http://localhost if you wish to test the domain on the local machine

curl -Iv -X GET 12.34.56.78 -H 'Host: example.com'

The following command is used to test a https domain. -k will skip the certificate check

curl -Ik -X GET https://website.com

Testing a vhost on the localhost

curl -Iv -x GET localhost -H 'Host: vhost.com'

Body String Match
-s flag hides the download speed etc

curl -is https://tickets.daysoutwithkids.co.uk/longleat | grep Maintenance

Output:

<title>Days Out With Kids | Maintenance</title>
                                    <h3>Sorry, Site Under Maintenance</h3>

Example without the s flag

curl -i https://tickets.daysoutwithkids.co.uk/longleat | grep Maintenance

Output:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  9885  100  9885    0     0   280k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 9653k
        <title>Days Out With Kids | Maintenance</title>
                                    <h3>Sorry, Site Under Maintenance</h3>

Curling localhost and ignoring ssl If the website has an ssl certificate you can also apply the 'k' option to bypass the certificate check. e.g:

curl -ik localhost -H 'https://website.com' | grep body_match_string

Using Lynx
Note: This is not as accurate as curl Testing to see if a website returns a certain string. Body match strings are often used in monitoring alerts

lynx -dump http://lukeslinuxlessons.co.uk | grep 'string match'