I double-checked why my usage of curl wasn't working. I figured out what I did wrong, so I abandoned my perl version and created one using shell and curl. Here is a generic server-side script that will do content checks. It lets you set contchk tags in bb-hosts and should be run server-side via hobbit-launch.cfg:

#!/bin/bash

contchk.sh written by Charles Jones (blazer0x at gmail.com) 6/6/2007

This script is designed to perform a content check on a URL and report the

status to a Hobbit server.

This script was created because Hobbits built-in content check

functionality

does not follow 302 redirects.

The script parses out a "contchk" tag in the bb-hosts file. The proper

syntax is: contchk;URL;REFERRER;CHECKSTRING

Note that CHECKSTRING cannot contain spaces so you must use regular

expression metacharacters, so use something like string.with.spaces

CURL=/usr/bin/curl # Location of curl binary BBHTAG=contchk # Name of the tag in bb-hosts COLUMN=cont # Column display name in Hobbit

Note: using grep because bbhostgrep fails on long lines

grep $BBHTAG $BBHOME/etc/bb-hosts | while read L do set $L # To get one line of output from bbhostgrep HOSTIP="$1" MACHINEDOTS="$2" MACHINE=echo $2 | $SED -e's/\./,/g' CHECKURL=echo $4 | awk -F";" '{print $2}' # Parse out the check URL REFERRER=echo $4 | awk -F";" '{print $3}' # Parse out the referrer string CHECKSTRING=echo $4 | awk -F";" '{print $4}' # Parse out the check string $CURL -s -L -e $REFERRER $CHECKURL -b cookiejar |grep -q "$CHECKSTRING" status=$? # Save greps return status if [ 0 -eq $status ]; then # grep returns 0 if it found something COLOR=green MSG="String <b>\"$CHECKSTRING\"</b> was found in <a href=$CHECKURL>$CHECKURL</a>" $BB $BBDISP "status $MACHINE.$COLUMN $COLOR date Content Check OK ${MSG} " else # grep didn't find anything COLOR=red MSG="String <b>\"$CHECKSTRING\"</b> was NOT FOUND in <a href=$CHECKURL>$CHECKURL</a>" $BB $BBDISP "status $MACHINE.$COLUMN $COLOR date Content Check FAILED ${MSG} " fi done exit 0

Charles Jones wrote:

I actually just whipped one up in perl, which I will post once I get it in decent shape. If yours is a shell script that uses curl, that might be easier for folks to use, since mine requires a couple of perl modules (LWP::UserAgent, HTTP:Headers) to function. I initially tried a shell script with curl but I couldn't get curl to properly pass the authentication cookie to the redirected URL without doing 2 requests, but I didn't spend much time on it so I was probably doing something wrong :)

-Charles

Ralph Mitchell wrote:

...

On 6/5/07, Charles Jones <jonescr at cisco.com> wrote:

...

I'm trying to do a content check of a URL that 302's (because an auth token is being passed in the URL). The problem I am having is Hobbit reports "No output received from server".

I searched the archives and noted that Hobbit does not (yet?) support following 302 redirects, but shouldn't it get "something" back from the server? If anything I could check the 302 code to verify that it is redirecting to the authenticated URL instead of the error one.

I'm doing this all the time, sucking web pages off our servers to validate correct operation. I'm using curl, in custom bash scripts, to grab pages. curl is very good at following 302 redirects, going through proxies with or without authentication, etc.

I've been meaning to post a more-or-less generic script, but haven't made the time to get it together. If you're interested, we could work something out offlist, then post a result either here or maybe on the Shire.

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