POST request with data

curl statistics made simple.

Overview

httpstat is a bash script that visualizes curl statistics in a human-readable format. It breaks down the HTTP request into individual phases (DNS lookup, TCP connection, SSL handshake, etc.) and displays the time spent in each phase, helping you identify performance bottlenecks.

Requirements

• bash (version 3.0 or later)
• curl (with -w write-out support)
• perl (for header colorization)
• bc or awk (for floating-point calculations; awk is used as fallback if bc is not available)

Usage

$ httpstat URL [CURL_OPTIONS]
$ httpstat -h | --help
$ httpstat --version

Arguments

Argument	Description
URL	The URL to request. Can be with or without http(s):// prefix
CURL_OPTIONS	Any curl supported options, except for -w, -D, -o, -S, -s which are used internally

Options

Option	Description
-h, --help	Show help message
--version	Show version information

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
HTTPSTAT_SHOW_BODY	Set to true to print the response body to stdout. By default, the body is saved to a temporary file
HTTPSTAT_SHOW_SPEED	Set to true to display download and upload speed in KiB/s

Examples

Basic Usage

# Simple GET request
httpstat example.com

# Request with explicit HTTPS
httpstat https://example.com

# Request with custom headers
httpstat https://api.example.com -H "Authorization: Bearer token"

# POST request with data
httpstat https://api.example.com -X POST -d '{"key": "value"}'

# Follow redirects
httpstat example.com -L

With Environment Variables

# Show response body
HTTPSTAT_SHOW_BODY=true httpstat example.com

# Show download/upload speed
HTTPSTAT_SHOW_SPEED=true httpstat example.com

# Combine both
HTTPSTAT_SHOW_BODY=true HTTPSTAT_SHOW_SPEED=true httpstat example.com

Understanding the Output

Timing Metrics

httpstat displays the following timing metrics:

Metric	Description
DNS Lookup	Time spent resolving the domain name to an IP address
TCP Connection	Time spent establishing a TCP connection to the server
SSL Handshake	Time spent performing the TLS/SSL handshake (HTTPS only)
Server Processing	Time from the request being sent to receiving the first byte of response
Content Transfer	Time spent downloading the response body

Cumulative Timings

The output also shows cumulative timings from curl:

Timing	Description
namelookup	Time until DNS resolution completed
connect	Time until TCP connection established
pretransfer	Time until ready to start transfer (includes SSL for HTTPS)
starttransfer	Time until first byte received (TTFB - Time To First Byte)
total	Total time for the entire request

HTTP vs HTTPS Output

For HTTP requests, the output shows 4 phases:

  DNS Lookup   TCP Connection   Server Processing   Content Transfer
[   23ms     |      35ms      |       120ms       |       45ms      ]

For HTTPS requests, the output includes an additional SSL Handshake phase:

  DNS Lookup   TCP Connection   SSL Handshake   Server Processing   Content Transfer
[   23ms     |      35ms      |     85ms      |       120ms       |       45ms      ]

Response Information

• HTTP Headers: Displayed with syntax highlighting at the top of the output
• Response Body: Saved to a temporary file (path shown in output) unless HTTPSTAT_SHOW_BODY=true

Installation

There are two ways to get httpstat:

• Download the script directly:

  • wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/babarot/httpstat/master/httpstat
  • curl -o httpstat https://raw.githubusercontent.com/babarot/httpstat/master/httpstat

• Install through zplug:

  zplug "babarot/httpstat", as:command, use:httpstat
  

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"too few arguments" error

Make sure you provide a URL:

httpstat example.com  # Correct
httpstat              # Error: too few arguments

SSL Handshake time shows 0ms for HTTPS

This can happen if:

• The connection is reusing an existing SSL session
• There's a proxy handling SSL termination

Output not colored

Ensure your terminal supports ANSI color codes. If using in a script or pipe, colors may be disabled.

bc: command not found

The script will automatically fall back to awk for calculations. No action needed, but you can install bc for slightly better precision:

# macOS
brew install bc

# Debian/Ubuntu
apt-get install bc

# RHEL/CentOS
yum install bc

Tips

• Use -L flag to follow redirects: httpstat example.com -L
• For APIs requiring authentication, pass headers: httpstat api.example.com -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN"
• To test POST requests: httpstat api.example.com -X POST -d "data"
• Check SSL certificate issues: httpstat https://example.com -k (skip certificate verification)

Related Projects

Other implementations of httpstat in various languages:

Language	Repository
Python	reorx/httpstat
Go	davecheney/httpstat
Node.js	yosuke-furukawa/httpstat
Go (library)	tcnksm/go-httpstat

Author

@babarot

License

MIT