cURL suppress response body

Question

You can use the -o switch and null pseudo-file :

Unix

curl -s -o /dev/null -v http://google.com

Windows

curl -s -o nul -v http://google.com

Here's a way to suppress all curl output and headers, with the option of still showing errors if they occur. Useful for cron jobs or automated testing.

Unix

To suppress all output:

curl --silent --output /dev/null http://example.com

To suppress output but still show errors if they occur:

curl --silent --output /dev/null --show-error --fail http://example.com

Windows

To suppress all output:

curl --silent --output nul http://example.com

To suppress output but still show errors if they occur:

curl --silent --output nul --show-error --fail http://example.com

Parameters Explained

--silent suppresses the download-in-progress stats (but will still show HTML output)
--output /dev/null hides successful output
--show-error shows errors, even when silent mode is enabled
--fail will raise an error if HTTP response is an error code (404, 500 etc.) instead of merely DNS/TCP errors.

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UPDATE: I realise the original author wanted to inspect the headers and response code of a request rather than silencing everything. See samael's answer for details on how to do that.

When you want to show headers but hide the response body, you'll want to use:

curl -sIXGET http://somedomain.com/your/url

I'd been using curl -I http://somedomain.com/your/url for just showing response headers. The problem with that though is that it makes the request using the HEAD method which is no good when you want to test an API call that only responds to a GET request. This is what the -X GET is for, it changes the request to a GET.

So, in summary:

-s hides the progress bars from output (especially useful when piping to another program)
-I shows headers (but makes a HEAD request)
-XGET converts request back to a GET request

see: http://www.woolie.co.uk/article/curl-full-get-request-dropping-body/

Just make a HEAD request. You will get the headers without the body. A standards-compilant server is supposed to send exactly the same information here as it would to a GET request.

curl --head <url>

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If a HEAD request doesn't work for you for some reason, the following will make cURL make a GET request but then print response code and headers and drop the connection without receiving the response body -- unlike other answers which receive and then discard it. This can save a lot of time and bandwidth, especially if the body is very large.

curl --head -X GET <url>

You can do likewise with any other verb (e.g. POST) by supplying it to the -X option instead of GET.