the verbose mode will tell you everything

curl -v 

I found this question because I wanted independent access to BOTH the response and the content in order to add some error handling for the user.

Curl allows you to customize output. You can print the HTTP status code to std out and write the contents to another file.

curl -s -o response.txt -w "%{http_code}" 

This allows you to check the return code and then decide if the response is worth printing, processing, logging, etc.

http_response=$(curl -s -o response.txt -w "%{http_code}" )
if [ $http_response != "200" ]; then
    # handle error
else
    echo "Server returned:"
    cat response.txt    
fi

The %{http_code} is a variable substituted by curl. You can do a lot more, or send code to stderr, etc. See curl manual and the --write-out option.

-w, --write-out

Make curl display information on stdout after a completed transfer. The format is a string that may contain plain text mixed with any number of variables. The format can be specified as a literal "string", or you can have curl read the format from a file with "@filename" and to tell curl to read the format from stdin you write "@-".

The variables present in the output format will be substituted by the value or text that curl thinks fit, as described below. All variables are specified as %{variable_name} and to output a normal % you just write them as %%. You can output a newline by using \n, a carriage return with \r and a tab space with \t.

The output will be written to standard output, but this can be switched to standard error by using %{stderr}.

I use this command to print the status code without any other output. Additionally, it will only perform a HEAD request and follow the redirection (respectively -I and -L).

curl -o -I -L -s -w "%{http_code}" 

This makes it very easy to check the status code in a health script:

sh -c '[ $(curl -o -I -L -s -w "%{http_code}" ) -eq 200 ]'

The -i option is the one that you want:

curl -i 

-i, --include Include protocol headers in the output (H/F)

Alternatively you can use the verbose option:

curl -v 

-v, --verbose Make the operation more talkative

I have used this :

    request_cmd="$(curl -i -o - --silent -X GET --header 'Accept: application/json' --header 'Authorization: _your_auth_code==' ')"

To get the HTTP status

    http_status=$(echo "$request_cmd" | grep HTTP |  awk '{print $2}')
    echo $http_status

To get the response body I've used this

    output_response=$(echo "$request_cmd" | grep body)
    echo $output_response

This command

 curl  -w ", %{http_code}"

will get the comma separated body and status; you can split them to get them out.

You can change the delimiter as you like.

This is a way to retrieve the body "AND" the status code and format it to a proper json or whatever format works for you. Some may argue it's the incorrect use of write format option but this works for me when I need both body and status code in my scripts to check status code and relay back the responses from server.

curl -X GET -w "%{stderr}{\"status\": \"%{http_code}\", \"body\":\"%{stdout}\"}"  -s -o - “ 2>&1

run the code above and you should get back a json in this format:

{
"status" : <status code>,
"body" : <body of response>
}

with the -w write format option, since stderr is printed first, you can format your output with the var http_code and place the body of the response in a value (body) and follow up the enclosing using var stdout. Then redirect your stderr output to stdout and you'll be able to combine both http_code and response body into a neat output

To get response code along with response:

$ curl -kv