How to evaluate http response codes from bash/shell script?

I haven't tested this on a 500 code, but it works on others like 200, 302 and 404.

response=$(curl --write-out '%{http_code}' --silent --output /dev/null servername)

Note, format provided for --write-out should be quoted. As suggested by @ibai, add --head to make a HEAD only request. This will save time when the retrieval is successful since the page contents won't be transmitted.

I needed to demo something quickly today and came up with this. Thought I would place it here if someone needed something similar to the OP's request.

#!/bin/bash

status_code=$(curl --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null www.bbc.co.uk/news)

if [[ "$status_code" -ne 200 ]] ; then
  echo "Site status changed to $status_code" | mail -s "SITE STATUS CHECKER" "my_email@email.com" -r "STATUS_CHECKER"
else
  exit 0
fi

This will send an email alert on every state change from 200, so it's dumb and potentially greedy. To improve this, I would look at looping through several status codes and performing different actions dependent on the result.

Although the accepted response is a good answer, it overlooks failure scenarios. curl will return 000 if there is an error in the request or there is a connection failure.

url='http://localhost:8080/'
status=$(curl --head --location --connect-timeout 5 --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null ${url})
[[ $status == 500 ]] || [[ $status == 000 ]] && echo restarting ${url} # do start/restart logic

Note: this goes a little beyond the requested 500 status check to also confirm that curl can even connect to the server (i.e. returns 000).

Create a function from it:

failureCode() {
    local url=${1:-http://localhost:8080}
    local code=${2:-500}
    local status=$(curl --head --location --connect-timeout 5 --write-out %{http_code} --silent --output /dev/null ${url})
    [[ $status == ${code} ]] || [[ $status == 000 ]]
}

Test getting a 500:

failureCode http://httpbin.org/status/500 && echo need to restart

Test getting error/connection failure (i.e. 000):

failureCode http://localhost:77777 && echo need to start

Test not getting a 500:

failureCode http://httpbin.org/status/400 || echo not a failure

Here is my implementation, which is a bit more verbose than some of the previous answers

curl https://somewhere.com/somepath   \
--silent \
--insecure \
--request POST \
--header "your-curl-may-want-a-header" \
--data @my.input.file \
--output site.output \
--write-out %{http_code} \
  > http.response.code 2> error.messages
errorLevel=$?
httpResponse=$(cat http.response.code)


jq --raw-output 'keys | @csv' site.output | sed 's/"//g' > return.keys
hasErrors=`grep --quiet --invert errors return.keys;echo $?`

if [[ $errorLevel -gt 0 ]] || [[ $hasErrors -gt 0 ]] || [[ "$httpResponse" != "200" ]]; then
  echo -e "Error POSTing https://somewhere.com/somepath with input my.input (errorLevel $errorLevel, http response code $httpResponse)" >> error.messages
  send_exit_message # external function to send error.messages to whoever.
fi

With netcat and awk you can handle the server response manually:

if netcat 127.0.0.1 8080 <<EOF | awk 'NR==1{if ($2 == "500") exit 0; exit 1;}'; then
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

EOF

    apache2ctl restart;
fi

i didn't like the answers here that mix the data with the status. found this: you add the -f flag to get curl to fail and pick up the error status code from the standard status var: $?

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/204762/return-code-for-curl-used-in-a-command-substitution

i don't know if it's perfect for every scenario here, but it seems to fit my needs and i think it's much easier to work with

1. Assuming you have already implemented a stop and start script for your application. Create a script as follows which checks the http status of your application url and restarts in case of 502:

httpStatusCode=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://{your_url}/) if [ $httpStatusCode = 502 ]; then sh /{path_to_folder}/stopscript.sh sh /{path_to_folder}/startscript.sh fi

2. Implement a cron job to invoke this script every 5 mins. Assuming the script above has name checkBootAndRestart.sh. Then your crontab should look like- */5 * * * * /{path_to_folder}/checkBootAndRestart.sh