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**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 22, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612 "2009-12-22T23:49:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@quik77](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/quik77)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612/1 "2009-12-22T23:49:20Z")
I have a script, foobar.cgi
I can load it into my browser, as in
[http://localhost/foobar.cgi](http://localhost/foobar.cgi)
It generates html code. I am using Apache on Linux here,
everything is local only.
My question is:
Is there an easy way to grab that generated html code and
display it (as a long string) on a console?
I thought lynx -dump might help but it doesn’t, plus it is
not a “ruby only” solution, which I would prefer (since
I’d like this to work on windows as well, even without
lynx around)
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**Author:**  [@quik77](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/quik77)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612/2 "2009-12-23T03:04:30Z")
Marc H. wrote:
> I have a script, foobar.cgi
>
> I can load it into my browser, as in
> [http://localhost/foobar.cgi](http://localhost/foobar.cgi)
>
> […]
> Is there an easy way to grab that generated html code and
> display it (as a long string) on a console?
> […]
> a “ruby only” solution, which I would prefer
require ‘open-uri’
print open(‘[http://localhost/foobar.cgi](http://localhost/foobar.cgi)’).read
> I thought lynx -dump might help but it doesn’t,
What does “it doesn’t” mean? If it means “but I don’t see the HTML”,
then that because you should’ve used -source, not -dump.
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**Author:**  [@quik77](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/quik77)\
**Post date:** [December 25, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612/3 "2009-12-25T20:17:46Z")
On Dec 22, 2009, at 14:49 , Marc H. wrote:
> Is there an easy way to grab that generated html code and
> display it (as a long string) on a console?
% ruby foobar.cgi \< /dev/null
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**Author:**  [@quik77](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/quik77)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 9:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612/4 "2009-12-23T21:31:01Z")
Marc H. wrote:
> I have a script, foobar.cgi
>
> I can load it into my browser, as in
> [http://localhost/foobar.cgi](http://localhost/foobar.cgi)
>
> It generates html code. I am using Apache on Linux here,
> everything is local only.
>
> My question is:
>
> Is there an easy way to grab that generated html code and
> display it (as a long string) on a console?
(1) curl [http://localhost/foobar.cgi](http://localhost/foobar.cgi)
With appropriate command-line options you can also POST to the CGI
easily enough. (Maintaining a session with cookies would be more awkward
though)
(2) I believe you should just be able to run the CGI from the command
line:
/path/to/foobar.cgi
or
ruby /path/to/foobar.cgi
in which case it’ll prompt you for any parameters, then press ^D to get
the response.
(3) The very manual way:
telnet localhost 80
GET /foobar.cgi HTTP/1.0
Host: localhost
---
**Author:**  [@quik77](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/quik77)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 11:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/displaying-the-html-from-a-ruby-cgi-script/180612/5 "2010-01-30T11:48:15Z")
Thanks for the help, works nicely!