Output & Progress

Orb provides several options for controlling how responses are displayed.

Response Body

By default, the response body is printed to stdout:

orb https://api.example.com/users

Save to File

Use -o or --output to save the response to a file:

orb https://example.com/file.zip -o downloaded.zip

Response Headers

Include Headers (`-i`)

Use -i or --include to print headers before the body:

orb -i https://example.com

Output:

HTTP/2 200 OK
content-type: text/html
date: Mon, 01 Jan 2024 12:00:00 GMT
content-length: 1234

<!DOCTYPE html>
...

Headers Only (`-I`)

Use -I or --head to show only headers (no body):

orb -I https://example.com

This is equivalent to a HEAD request, showing the response line and headers.

Verbose Mode (`-v`)

Use -v or --verbose for detailed request/response information:

orb -v https://example.com

Verbose output includes:

DNS resolution
TLS handshake details
Request headers (prefixed with >)
Response headers (prefixed with <)

* Resolving host: example.com
*   Resolved example.com to 93.184.216.34 (12ms)
* TLS handshake completed
*   TLS version: TLSv1.3
*   Cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
*   ALPN: h2
*   Server certificate:
*     Subject: CN=example.com
*     Issuer: CN=DigiCert Global Root CA
> GET / HTTP/2
> Host: example.com
> User-Agent: orb/0.1.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/2 200 OK
< content-type: text/html
< date: Mon, 01 Jan 2024 12:00:00 GMT
<

Write-Out Statistics (`-w`)

Use -w or --write-out to display timing and size statistics:

orb -w https://example.com

Output (to stderr):

http_code: 200
size_download: 1234
time_starttransfer: 0.234
time_total: 0.456

Metric	Description
`http_code`	HTTP status code
`size_download`	Response body size in bytes
`time_starttransfer`	Time to first byte (TTFB) in seconds
`time_total`	Total request time in seconds

Progress Bar

Manual Progress (`-#`)

Use -# or --progress to show a download progress bar:

orb -# https://example.com/large-file.iso -o large-file.iso

Output:

[00:01:23] ████████████░░░░░░░░░ 45.2% • 450 MiB/1 GiB • 50 MiB/s • ETA 00:01:40

Automatic Progress

For downloads over 100 MiB, progress is shown automatically:

orb https://example.com/huge-file.iso -o huge.iso
# Progress bar appears automatically

Also, if the first byte takes more than 1 second, progress appears.

Silent Mode (`-s`)

Use -s or --silent to suppress all output except the response body:

orb -s https://example.com

Silent mode suppresses:

Verbose output (-v)
Statistics (-w)
Progress bar (-#)
Error messages

Combining Options

# Verbose with headers and stats
orb -v -i -w https://example.com

# Download with progress, save to file
orb -# https://example.com/file.zip -o file.zip

# Headers only, verbose
orb -v -I https://example.com

# Silent mode for scripting
if orb -s https://api.example.com/health; then
  echo "API is healthy"
fi

Output Destinations

Content	Destination	Flag
Response body	stdout	(default)
Response body	file	`-o`
Response headers	stdout	`-i`
Verbose info	stderr	`-v`
Statistics	stderr	`-w`
Progress bar	stderr	`-#`
Errors	stderr	(always)

Examples

API Response with Timing

orb -w https://api.example.com/users | jq .

Debug Request Issues

orb -v https://api.example.com 2>&1 | less

Download with Full Details

orb -v -# -w https://example.com/file.zip -o file.zip

Pipe Response, Keep Stats

orb -w https://api.example.com/data 2>stats.txt | process-data