URL Tracker

A command-line tool to check HTTP status codes and track redirects.

Github repo: https://github.com/nalmeida/urltracker

Overview

URL Tracker helps you analyze HTTP responses and redirects for single URLs or lists of URLs. Perfect for website maintenance, SEO auditing, and link checking.

Features:

• Single URL status checking
• Batch URL processing from a txt file
• Redirect chain tracking
• CSV output for further analysis
• Basic authentication support
• Custom headers and cookies
• Verbose mode with detailed curl command display for debugging

Since v2.0.0 urltracker sends GET as default request method as some servers were returning 404 status instead of 200.

Since v2.1.0 urltracker uses Safari iOS 17.1 User-Agent for better compatibility with modern web servers and anti-bot protections.

Requirements

• Bash shell environment
• curl command-line tool
• BATS (Bash Automated Testing System) for running tests

Installation

Via Homebrew

brew tap nalmeida/urltracker
brew install urltracker

Note

URL Tracker Homebrew Formula

Via git clone

1. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/nalmeida/urltracker.git
cd urltracker

2. Make the script executable:

chmod +x urltracker

3. (Optional) Create a symlink to use it from anywhere:

sudo ln -s $(pwd)/urltracker /usr/local/bin/urltracker

Usage

Basic URL Check

urltracker https://httpbin.org/status/200

Process a List of URLs

Create a text file with one URL per line (e.g.: urls.txt):

https://httpbin.org/status/200
https://httpbin.org/redirect/2
https://httpbin.org/status/404

Then run:

urltracker --list urls.txt

Output to CSV

urltracker --list urls.txt --output results.csv

Using Authentication

urltracker --auth user:pass https://httpbin.org/basic-auth/user/pass

Using Custom Headers

urltracker --header "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0" --header "Accept-Language: en-US" https://httpbin.org/status/200

Using Custom Method

urltracker --method PATCH https://httpbin.org/anything  --verbose

Verbose Output

urltracker https://httpbin.org/redirect/2 --verbose

Full Options List

Usage: urltracker [OPTIONS] [URL]

Options:
  -h, --help                   Display this help message
  -V, --version                Display the version
  -l, --list <file>            Process a list of URLs from a text file
  -o, --output <file>          Export results to a CSV file
  -v, --verbose                Verbose mode: show all redirect URLs
  -q, --quiet                  Quiet mode: no output to console
  -nc, --no-color              Disable colored output
  -m, --method <method> HTTP method to use (default: GET. HEAD is faster but some servers may block it)
  -a, --auth <user:password>   Use HTTP Basic Authentication
  -H, --header <header>        Add custom header (can be used multiple times)
  -c, --cookie <name=value>    Add a cookie (can be used multiple times)

Development

Running Tests

This project uses BATS (Bash Automated Testing System) for testing. To run the tests:

1. Install BATS if you don't have it:

# MacOS
brew install bats-core

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install bats

2. Run the tests:

bats test_urltracker.bats

3. For verbose test output:

bats --tap test_urltracker.bats

4. For debug test output:

bats --print-output-on-failure --show-output-of-passing-tests test_urltracker.bats

Test Coverage

The test suite covers:

• Basic functionality
• URL list processing
• Output formatting
• Error handling
• Authentication and custom headers
• Command-line option parsing

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Make your changes and add tests for new functionality
4. Run the test suite to ensure everything passes (bats test_urltracker.bats)
5. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add amazing feature')
6. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
7. Create a new Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• The BATS project for the testing framework
• The command curl -IL https://httpbin.org/redirect/2 that led me to create this project
• The amazing httpx as inspiration and a powerful alternative to this humble project
• The amazing vhs CLI demo generator