Bash: Display Web Page Content In Terminal
H
ow can I fetch HTML web page content from bash and display on screen using shell utilities?
You can use any one of the following tool or combination of all of them to get the contents of a webpage in a shell:
[1] curl command – It is a tool to transfer data from or to a server using http/https/ftp and much more.
[2] lynx command – It is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client/browser for users running terminals.
[3] wget command – It is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.
[4] w3m command – It is a text based Web browser and pager.
Installation
Above tools may not be installed on your Linux or Unix like operating systems.
Note: You need to login as root user to install required tools.
Debian / Ubuntu Linux install curl, wget, lynx, and w3m
Open a terminal and and then type:
$ sudo apt-get install curl wget lynx w3m
Fedora / RHEL / CentOS Linux install curl, wget, lynx, and w3m
Open a terminal and and then type:
$ sudo yum install curl wget lynx w3m
FreeBSD Unix install curl, wget, lynx, and w3m (binary package)
Open a terminal and and then type:
$ sudo pkg_add -v -r curl lynx w3m wget
Examples
You can use curl command to download the page:
curl http://www.cyberciti.biz/
curl http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/
Use curl and store output into a variable as follows:
page= $(curl http://www.cyberciti.biz/)
page= $(curl http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/)
To display content use echo or printf command as follows:
echo $page
printf %s $page
lynx command examples
Use the lynx command as follows:
lynx -dump www.cyberciti.biz
lynx -dump www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/
The -dump option dumps the formatted output of the default document or those specified on the command line to standard output. Unlike interactive mode, all documents are processed.
wget command examples
The syntax is as follows:
wget -O – http://www.cyberciti.biz
wget -O – http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/
OR use wget command to grab the page and store it into a variable called page:
page= $(wget -O – http://www.cyberciti.biz)
display page ##
echo $page
or pass it to lynx / w3m ##
echo $page | w3m -dump -T text/html
echo $page | lynx -dump -stdin
w3m command examples
The syntax is as follows to dump web page content in terminal using the w3m command:
w3m -dump http://www.cyberciti.biz/
w3m -dump http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/
OR use w3m command to grab the page and store it into a variable called page:
page= $(w3m -dump http://www.cyberciti.biz/)
echo $page
Practical examples
Get the definition of linux from a dictionary:
$ curl dict://dict.org/d:linux
Sample outputs:
220 pan.alephnull.com dictd 1.12.0/rf on Linux 3.0.0-14-server <21853866.27331.1375614736@pan.alephnull.com>
250 ok
150 1 definitions retrieved
151 linux wn WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
Linux
n 1: an open-source version of the UNIX operating system
.
250 ok [d/m/c = 1/0/30; 0.000r 0.000u 0.000s]
221 bye [d/m/c = 0/0/0; 0.000r 0.000u 0.000s]
Backup your del.icio.us bookmarks:
$ wget –user=Your-Username-Here –password=Your-Password-Here https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all -O my-old-bookmarks.xml
$ more my-old-bookmarks.xml
Grab all .mp3s from url:
mp3=$(lynx -dump http://server1.cyberciti.biz/media/index.html | grep http:// | awk /mp3/{print $2} )
for i in $mp3
wget $i
done
See also
See man pages for more info – curl(1),w3m(1),lynx(1),wget(1)
