How to use `curl` to get headers from a URL

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: April 8, 2018

Curl FAQ: How do I use curl to get the headers from a website URL?

Short answer: Use curl's -I option, like this:

$ curl -I URL

Here's a specific example, including a real URL and results:

$ curl -I http://goo.gl/3fG5K

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Fri, 01 Jan 1990 00:00:00 GMT
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:11:15 GMT
Location: http://alvinalexander.com/linux/linux-teleport-command-cd-improved
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Server: GSE
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

The following example shows the output from curl when you don't use the -I option on the same URL:

$ curl http://goo.gl/3fG5K

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Moved Permanently</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000">
<H1>Moved Permanently</H1>
The document has moved <A HREF="http://alvinalexander.com/linux/linux-teleport-command-cd-improved">here</A>.
</BODY>
</HTML>

linux-unix

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linux

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How to use `curl` to get headers from a URL

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