Terminal-based web clients

Browsers:

• elinks
• links
• lynx

CLI utilities:

• cURL
• httpie
• wget

cURL

$ curl icanhazip.com
193.190.172.117

Try this:

• curl 'https://icanhazdadjoke.com/'
• curl 'https://api.coinlore.net/api/ticker/?id=90'
• curl 'https://education.thingsflow.eu/IAQ/DeviceByQR?hashedname=5201731f632701e602d31f98be7297e088a94eb38736c452495f02e444d4ba2d'

Output, redirection

• Normally, curl prints to stdout

• When redirected, progress information is printed:

  $ curl 'https://icanhazdadjoke.com/' > joke.txt
    % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                   Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  100    95  100    95    0     0    320      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   319

• Turn off with -s / --silent

HTTP Request methods

E.g.

curl -X GET https://httpbun.com/any
curl -X POST https://httpbun.com/any
curl -X PUT https://httpbun.com/any
curl -X DELETE https://httpbun.com/any
...

Which request is default?

Saving the result

• -o, --output <file>
• -O, --remote-name

curl -s -o anything.json https://httpbun.com/any
curl -s -O https://www.google.com/robots.txt

Show headers

• -i, --include: toon ook de HTTP response headers
• -I, --head: toon enkel de headers

curl -i http://google.com

Set request headers

curl -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt)' \
    https://httpbun.com/any

Follow redirects

• -L, --location

curl https://www.twitter.com      # Leeg resultaat!
curl -i https://www.twitter.com   # zie location: veld in de response header
curl -L https://www.twitter.com   # volg de redirect

POST data

• -d, --data var=val&var=val

curl -X POST -d 'penguin=tux&color=blue' https://httpbun.com/any