LWP-REQUEST(1)

📦
version 6.770.0 · 10 versions
, in opensuse-leap 16.0

💅 LWP-REQUEST(1) — ok bestie, this is the Simple command line user agent and she's serving from the User Contributed Perl Documentation section of the manual, periodt

✨ NAME ✨

lwp-request — Simple command line user agent 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

lwp-request [-afPuUsSedvhx] [-m method] [-b base URL] [-t timeout]
            [-i if-modified-since] [-c content-type]
            [-C credentials] [-p proxy-url] [-o format] url...

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so picture this: this program literally sends requests to WWW servers and to your local file system. Both. Iconic versatility, no cap. 🌈

The request content for POST, PUT and PATCH methods is read from stdin. The content of the response gets printed on stdout. Error messages go on stderr. And the program returns a status value indicating the number of URLs that failed — so like, if three URLs flopped, that number is three, bestie. 🫶

Here come the options:

  • -m <method> — Set which method to use for the request. If this option is not used, then the method is derived from the name of the program. Sneaky, but she's valid. 💅
  • -f — Force request through, even if the program believes that the method is illegal. The server might reject the request eventually. So like… she'll go, but she might get turned away at the door 😭 no promises.
  • -b <uri> — This URI will be used as the base URI for resolving all relative URIs given as argument. Main character URI energy, everything else revolves around her. 👑
  • -t <timeout> — Set the timeout value for the requests. The timeout is the amount of time that the program will wait for a response from the remote server before it fails. The default unit for the timeout value is seconds. You might append "m" or "h" to the timeout value to make it minutes or hours, respectively. The default timeout is '3m', i.e. 3 minutes. ⏳
  • -i <time> — Set the If-Modified-Since header in the request. If time is the name of a file, use the modification timestamp for this file. If time is not a file, it is parsed as a literal date. Take a look at HTTP::Date for recognized formats. 🗓️
  • -c <content-type> — Set the Content-Type for the request. This option is only allowed for requests that take a content, i.e. POST, PUT and PATCH. You can force methods to take content by using the "-f" option together with "-c". The default Content-Type for POST is "application/x-www-form-urlencoded". The default Content-type for the others is "text/plain". Type her up 💅
  • -p <proxy-url> — Set the proxy to be used for the requests. The program also loads proxy settings from the environment. You can disable this with the "-P" option. 🧚
  • -P — Don't load proxy settings from environment. Bye environment, we're doing our own thing 🙈
  • -H <header> — Send this HTTP header with each request. You can specify several, e.g.:
lwp-request \
    -H 'Referer: http://other.url/' \
    -H 'Host: somehost' \
    http://this.url/
  • -C <username>:<password> — Provide credentials for documents that are protected by Basic Authentication. If the document is protected and you did not specify the username and password with this option, then you will be prompted to provide these values. She'll ask, she's polite. 🎀

💫 the display options (aka what actually gets printed) 💫

The following options controls what is displayed by the program:

  • -u — Print request method and absolute URL as requests are made. Live commentary, obsessed. 🔥
  • -U — Print request headers in addition to request method and absolute URL. Now we're really nosy and honestly? respect.
  • -s — Print response status code. This option is always on for HEAD requests. Not optional bestie, it's just how HEAD rolls. 💀
  • -S — Print response status chain. This shows redirect and authorization requests that are handled by the library. The whole journey, not just the destination ✨
  • -e — Print response headers. This option is always on for HEAD requests. Same deal, always on, no take-backs. 🦋
  • -E — Print response status chain with full response headers. The deluxe version, the director's cut, the extra toppings. 👑
  • -d — Do not print the content of the response. Skip the body, just vibe with the metadata.
  • -o <format> — Process HTML content in various ways before printing it. If the content type of the response is not HTML, then this option has no effect. The legal format values are; "text", "ps", "links", "html" and "dump". 🌸

If you specify the "text" format then the HTML will be formatted as plain "latin1" text. If you specify the "ps" format then it will be formatted as Postscript.

The "links" format will output all links found in the HTML document. Relative links will be expanded to absolute ones. Glow-up for every link 🔗

The "html" format will reformat the HTML code and the "dump" format will just dump the HTML syntax tree.

Note that the "HTML-Tree" distribution needs to be installed for this option to work. In addition the "HTML-Format" distribution needs to be installed for -o text or -o ps to work. Like, without those? she simply cannot. 😭
  • -v — Print the version number of the program and quit. Hi and bye 💜
  • -h — Print usage message and quit. Also hi and bye, but with instructions.
  • -a — Set text(ascii) mode for content input and output. If this option is not used, content input and output is done in binary mode. Choose your fighter ⭐

Because this program is implemented using the LWP library, it will only support the protocols that LWP supports. That's the whole vibe check — if LWP doesn't know it, neither does she. 🧚

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

lwp-mirror, LWP

Copyright 1995-1999 Gisle Aas.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🫶 this lil gem comes to you courtesy of perl v5.42.0, dated 2026-05-18 — go forth and lwp-request responsibly, mwah 💋✨

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