Ren's Programming Corner


htdump is DEPRECATED - Please use 'curl' instead.

Short: htdump is a linux tool to retrieve WWW data.

HTdump is an automation utility to retrieve URLs and write them to a file, or process them through a pipeline. It is also a very usefull tool for web developer who work low level, for example with CGI binaries. This makes a perfect debugging tool, since it allows usual but also rfc-illegal operations. Packet level debugging is included in this tool.

HTdump supports SSL (via OpenSSL if included during compile time) By using 'https://' at the beginning of the requested URL, SSL is turned on, and port 443 is presumed, although port can still be changed. Otherwise SSL is off, and port 80 is presumed.

Username and password (basic) authentication is supported and can be entered with the URL. Empty usernames or passwords are allowed.

You can use other commands then the standard GET, for example, use the HEAD command with an URL to find out how big a document or file is.

Form data posting is allowed with the -post option. The data is send as x-www-form-urlencoded data (standard with form data). The length is automatically calculated and taken up in the headers. Use the debug option to examine what exactly gets send. Using the -post option overrides a -command option.

The HTML protocol can either be 'raw' (without any version info transmitted) or versions 1.0 and 1.1. Please note that some www servers react badly to raw requests. Also some options can only be used with the 1.1 protocol version. If contacting a server that is virtual hosting, select version 1.1.