Sunday, November 17, 2019

How to send HTTP request using curl and wget command from Linux and UNIX? Example Tutorial

You can use either curl or wget command to send HTTP requests from UNIX or Linux operating system. Both commands allow you to send GET and POST requests, which means you can also call REST web services.  I have a Java web application, which runs on Linux and exposes WebServices. I was writing a UNIX script to download In some data from that web service when I hit by the question, how do I make an HTTP call from UNIX? What is the UNIX command should I use? If you are also facing the same problem, then you have come to the right ht place. Basically, you can use two UNIX commands to make the HTTP request, wget, and curl.

You can use curl and wget to send both GET and POST HTTP requests. My use case was rather simple, I just need to make a GET call to web service to download the data, but these two commands are mighty and provide many different options to interact with the web using HTTP right from the shell.

Between wget and curl (also known as cURL), curl (I call it "karl") is my favorite. Why? I think because I have used it more often than wget :-).

You can make your choices if you have good knowledge of the Linux command line, and that's why I suggest every programmer and software developer join Learn Linux in 5 Days and Level Up Your Career course on Udemy, the best way to become efficient in Linux.

Now let's see how to send HTTP requests from UNIX using the curl command.


Linux Command to send HTTP GET request

Here is one example of calling web service from Linux shell by sending HTTP GET request using cURL command:

$ curl http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London,uk&appid=bd82977b86bf27fb59a04b61b657fb6f
{"coord":{"lon":-0.13,"lat":51.51},"weather":[
{"id":804,"main":"Clouds","description":"overcast clouds","icon":"04n"}],
"base":"stations",
"main":{"temp":282,"pressure":1022,"humidity":87,"temp_min":277.15,"temp_max":285.15},
"visibility":10000,"wind":{"speed":1.5},"clouds":{"all":90},"dt":1445577409,
"sys":{"type":1,"id":5093,"message":0.0201,"country":"GB",
"sunrise":1445582275,"sunset":1445619056},"id":2643743,"name":"London","cod":200}

You can also specify timeout using -m option as shown below:

$ curl -m 2 http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather
                    ?q=London,uk&appid=bd82977b86bf27fb59a04b61b657fb6f

This request will timeout in 2 seconds if it doesn't receive any response.



You can also use wget to send HTTP requests and download the data. The only difference between curl and wget is that curl will print output in console and wget will store it in the file e.g.

$ wget http://localhost:8080/index.html

will download the content of index.html and store it into a file with the same name.

Here is how you can use curl to download wget command in UNIX:

How to send HTTP request from UNIX? Use CURL command



UNIX command to Send an HTTP POST request

You can also use curl to send HTTP post requests. All you need to do is use the --data option to specify the data you want to POST to web service e.g.

$ curl --data "param1=value1&param2=value2" http://locahost:8080/weather

if you want to send data from file to web service, you can also use the following command:

$ curl -X POST -d @filename http://locahost:8080/weather

Similarly, if you're going to upload a file, you can do so by executing the following command:

$ curl --form "fileupload=@filename.txt" http://locahost:8080/weather

Btw, these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to seeing the real power of curl command. If you want to learn more, I suggest you check out the Linux Command Line Basics course on Udemy. One of the best courses to learn basic and advanced Linux commands.

best course to learn Linux commands for beginners


That's all about how to send HTTP requests from UNIX and Linux. It's simple, just remember the curl and wget command. You can explore their option by using man wget and man curl. Also, remember the difference between curl and wget, the former prints the output in the console while the later store the response in the same file as requested. I personally like curl because it's easier to use but if you like wget stick with it.

Further Learning
Linux Command Line Basics
Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) Fundamentals
Learn Linux in 5 Days and Level Up Your Career
The Linux Command Line: A Complete Reference (Book)


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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like this article, then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, then please drop a note.

P. S. - If you want to learn Linux and looking for some free resources like books and online courses, then you can also check out this list of free Linux courses for Programmers and IT Professionals. This list contains some of the best free courses from Udemy, Pluralsight, Coursera, Codecademy, and other online platforms. 

4 comments :

Anonymous said...

Great article. In the curl request you should use quotes around the URL and the data being sent curl "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London,uk&appid=bd82977b86bf27fb59a04b61b657fb6f" otherwise curl seems to thing everything after the & is another request. Super weird, but fixes a lot of script problems. Thanks for the article!

Anonymous said...

You can use wget and curl but some times in production enviroment you dont have curl wget etc :) . You can use /dev/tcp build kernel function
example:
exec 15<>/dev/tcp/consolechars.wordpress.com/80
echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.1\n\n" >&15
cat <&15

more :https://consolechars.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/devtcp-forgotten-linux-delicacy/

Unknown said...

Hello,

I have a xml file on some linux directory and I am trying it send to a rest api? Is there a way to do that?

Anonymous said...

hello

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