NAME
    lwp-request, GET, HEAD, POST - Simple WWW user agent

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

DESCRIPTION
    This program can be used to send requests to WWW servers and your local
    file system. The request content for POST and PUT methods is read from
    stdin. The content of the response is printed on stdout. Error mes-
    sages are printed on stderr. The program returns a status value indi-
    cating the number of URLs that failed.

    The options are:

    -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.

    -f Force request through, even if the program believes that the method
   is illegal. The server might reject the request eventually.

    -b <uri>
   This URI will be used as the base URI for resolving all relative
   URIs given as argument.

    -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 it 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 recogniced 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 and PUT.  You can force
   methods to take content by using the "-f" option together with
   "-c". The default Content-Type for POST is "applica-
   tion/x-www-form-urlencoded".  The default Content-type for the oth-
   ers is "text/plain".

    -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.

    -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 spec-
   ify the username and password with this option, then you will be
   prompted to provide these values.

    The following options controls what is displayed by the program:

    -u Print request method and absolute URL as requests are made.

    -U Print request headers in addition to request method and absolute
   URL.

    -s Print response status code. This option is always on for HEAD
   requests.

    -S Print response status chain. This shows redirect and autorization
   requests that are handled by the library.

    -e Print response headers. This option is always on for HEAD
   requests.

    -d Do not print the content of the response.

    -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.

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

    -v Print the version number of the program and quit.

    -h Print usage message and quit.

    -x Extra debugging output.

    -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.

    Because this program is implemented using the LWP library, it will only
    support the protocols that LWP supports.

SEE ALSO
    lwp-mirror, LWP

COPYRIGHT
    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>