Command Line Syntax
The generic syntax is:
w3c [ options ] [ URI [ keywords ] ]
Check here the following options
The order of the options is not important and options can in fact be
specified on either side of any URIs. Currently
available options are:-
- -help or -?
-
Load this file from directly into the browser
- -v [ a | b | c | g | p | s | t | u ]
-
Verbose mode: Gives a running commentary on the program's attempts to read
data in various ways. As the amount of verbose output is substantial, the
-v option can now be followed by zero, one or more of the
following flags (without space) in order to differentiate the verbose output
generated:
-
a: Anchor relevant information
-
b: Bindings to local file system
-
c: Cache trace
-
g: SGML trace
-
p: Protocol module information
-
s: SGML/HTML relevant information
-
t: Thread trace
-
u: URI relevant information
- -version
-
Prints out the version number of the software, and the version number of
libwww, and exits.
- -n
-
Non-interactive mode - don't ask - don't tell
- -r <address>
- Rule file, a.k.a. configuration
file is a set of rules and configuration options that can be used to map
URLs, and to set up other aspects of the behavior of the command line tool.
Note that the address must be specified as a URI - and in fact it can be
located on HTTP servers etc. as need be. File URIs are parsed relative to the
current folder, so a rule file address of "rules.conf" will point to
a file in the location where this tool it started. If a local file then the
file suffix must be ".conf" - otherwise the media type must be
application/x-www-rules
The Command Line Tool supports several HTTP
methods. The default value is "GET". These options imply non-interactive
execution.
- -get
-
Gets a document. This is the default operation! See Form
Submission and Searching for how to submit HTML forms and to issue
queries.
- -head
-
Returns the header information (if any) but not the document
- -delete
-
Deletes a resource (or makes it unavailable) for future references.
- -put
-
Uploads a document from either the local file system or a remote HTTP server
to a remote HTTP server (destination) using PUT method. You must
indicate the destination using the -dest command
line option.
- -post
-
Uploads a document from either the local file system or a remote HTTP server
to a remote HTTP server (destination) using POST method. You must
indicate the destination using the -dest command
line option. See Form Submission and Searching for how to
submit HTML forms and to issue queries.
- -options
-
Ask for the available options for this URL
- -trace
-
Ask for trace messages for this URL. You can supply the number of hop counts
with the additional -maxforwards command line option
- -dest
-
You can specify a (relative) destination URL, for example for the operations
PUT and POST using this flag. For example:
-dest http://myserver/newfiles/foo.html
- -auth
-
If you are willing to try this then you can include your username, password,
and the realm for where to apply it using the -auth command line
option. I don't want to hear anything about security, OK? The format is
user:password@realm
You can convert the outcome of a request to some other format by using the
following flags:
- -from [ format ]
-
Only if the Line mode Browser is executed as a filter (using the "-" option),
this option indicates the desired input format. The default value is
"text/html".
- -to [ format ]
-
Format is the output format for www. Default value is "www/present" but may be
changed according to the HTTP-specifications. Two common output formats are
"www/source" that is the source without MIME-headers and "www/mime" that is
the source with the MIME-header if any. Though also "text/latex" is possible
which generates a LaTeX version of the (HTML) document. This can then be
compiled using latex and put out as Postscript. Default value is presenting
the output to the user.
- -source
-
Display the original source (without any MIME-headers) of a document instead
of parsing it.
- -cl
-
Counting content length of the output. This flag appends the Content-Length
counter stream to the output stream so that everything is counted. This works
exactly like piping the output into wc.
Setting Input and Ourput Files
- -
-
A minus sign with no trailing characters indicates that the program will
accept HTML format input from the
standard input. This allows www to be used as a filter from html to plain text
for example.
- -o [ file ]
-
Redirects output to specified file. The default value is
"
w3c.out".
- -l [ file ]
-
Specifies a log file with a list of visited documents. The default value is
"
w3c.log"
- -maxforwards <n>
-
Max forwards to be used with the TRACE method
- -single
-
Singlethreaded mode. If this flag is set then the browser uses blocking, non
interruptible I/O in interactive mode. Non-interactive mode always uses
blocking I/O.
- -timeout <n>
-
Timeout in seconds on open connections. If we don't get a reply within n secs
then about the request. Default timeout is 20 secs
If present, the next argument (URI) is the hypertext address, of the
document at which you want to start browsing.
Any further command line arguments are taken as keywords. Keywords can be
used for two purposes:
-
As search tokens in an HTTP request-URI encoded so that all spaces are
replaced with "+" and unsafe characters are encoded using the URI
"%xx" escape mechanism. This is the default use of keywords.
-
As form data in an HTTP POST request. Use the -form command line
option to treat all keywords as form data. If the method is GET then the data is encoded as for search data,
that is as part of the URI. If it is a POST request
then the data is encoded as application/x-www-form-urlencoded
and sent in the body of the request.
An example of a search query is
w3c http://... "RECORD=ID" "par1=a" "par2=b" "par3=c" "par4=d"
and of a POST form submission
w3c -post http://... -form "RECORD=ID" "COL1=a" "COL2=b" "COL3=c" "COL4=d"
Henrik Frystyk Nielsen,
@(#) $Id: CommandLine.html,v 1.20 2000/03/24 15:32:19 vladimir Exp $