trurl.1

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.\" man -l trurl.1
.\" Written by Daniel Stenberg
.\"
.TH trurl 1 "3 Apr 2023" "trurl 0.4" "trurl Manual"
.SH NAME
trurl \- transpose URLs
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B trurl [options]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B trurl
parses, manipulates and outputs URLs and parts of URLs.

It uses the RFC 3986 definition of URLs and it uses libcurl's URL parser to do
so, which includes a few "extensions". The URL support is limited to
"hierarchical" URLs, the ones that use "://" separators after the scheme.

Typically you pass in one or more URLs and decide what of that you want
output. Posssibly modifying the URL as well.

trurl knows URLs and every URL consists of up to ten separate and independent
"components". These components can be extracted, removed and updated with
trurl and they are referred to by their respective names: scheme, user,
password, options, host, port, path, query, fragment and zoneid.
.SH "OPTIONS"
.IP "-a, --append [component]=[data]"
Append data to a component. This can only append data to the path and the
query components.

For path, this URL encodes and appends the new segment to the path, separated
with a slash.

For query, this URL encodes and appends the new segment to the query,
separated with an ampersand (&). If the appended segment contains an equal
sign ('=') that one will be kept verbatim and both sides of the first
occurrence will be URL encoded separately.
.IP "--accept-space"
When set, trurl will try to accept spaces as part of the URL and instead URL
encode such occurrences accordingly.

According to RFC 3986, a space cannot legally be part of a URL. This option
provides a best-effort to convert the provided string into a valid URL.
.IP "-f, --url-file [file name]"
Read URLs to work on from the given file. Use the file name "-" (a single
minus) to tell trurl to read the URLs from stdin.

Each line needs to be a single valid URL - but trurl will trim off any
trailing spaces and tabs from the end of the line. The maximum URL length
supported in a file like this is 4095 bytes.
.IP "-g, --get [format]"
Output text and URL data according to the provided format string. Components
from the URL can be output when specified as \fB{component}\fP or
\fB[component]\fP, with the name of the part show within curly braces or
brackets. You can not mix braces and brackets for this purpose in the same
command line.

The following component names are available (case sensitive): url, scheme,
user, password, options, host, port, path, query, fragment and zoneid.

Components are shown URL decoded by default. If you instead write the
component prefixed with a colon like "{:path}", it gets output URL encoded.

Hosts provided as IPv6 numerical addresses will be provided within square
brackets. Like "[fe80::20c:29ff:fe9c:409b]".

Hosts provided as IPv4 numerical addresses will be "normalized" and provided
as four dot-separated decimal numbers when output.

You can access specific keys in the query string using the format
\fB{query:key}\fP. Then the value of the first matching key will be output.

The "format" string supports the following backslash sequences:

\&\\\\ - backslash

\&\\t - tab

\&\\n - newline

\&\\r - carriage return

\&\\{ - an open curly brace that does not start a variable

\&\\[ - an open bracket that does not start a variable

All other text in the format string will be shown as-is.
.IP "-h, --help"
Show the help output.
.IP "--json"
Outputs all set components of the URLs as JSON objects. All components of the
URL that has data will get populated in the object using their component
names.
.IP "--query-separator [what]"
Specify the single letter used for separating query pairs. The default is "&"
but at least in the past sometimes semicolons ";" or even colons ":" have been
used for this purpose. If your URL uses something other than the default
letter, setting the right one makes sure trurl can do its query operations
properly.
.IP "--redirect [URL]"
Redirect the URL to this new location. It requires that you set the base url
with \fB--url\fP
.IP "-s, --set [component][:]=[data]"
Set this URL component. Setting blank string ("") will clear the component
from the URL.

The following components can be set: url, scheme, user, password,
options, host, port, path, query, fragment and zoneid.

If a simple "="-assignment is used, the data is URL encoded when applied. If
":=" is used, the data is assumed to already be URL encoded and will be stored
as-is.
.IP "--sort-query"
The "variable=content" tuplets in the query component are sorted in a case
insensitive alphabetical order. This helps making URLs identical that
otherwise only had their query pairs in different orders.
.IP "--url [URL]"
Set the input URL to work with. The URL may be provided without a scheme,
which then typically is not actually a legal URL but trurl will try to figure
out what is meant and guess what scheme to use.

Providing multiple URLs will make trurl act on all URLs in a serial fashion.

If the URL cannot be parsed for whatever reason, trurl will simply move on to
the next provided URL - unless \fI--verify\fP is used.
.IP "--trim [component]=[what]"
Trims data off a component. Currently this can only trim a query component.

"what" is specified as a full word or as a word prefix (using a single
trailing asterisk ('*')) which makes trurl remove the tuples from the query
string that match the instruction.
.IP "-v, --version"
Show version information and exit.
.IP "--verify"
When a URL is provided, return error immediately if it does not parse as a
valid URL. In normal cases, trurl can forgive a bad URL input.
.SH EXAMPLES
.IP "Replace the host name of a URL"
.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se --set host=example.com
https://example.com/
.fi
.IP "Create a URL by setting components"
.nf
 $ trurl --set host=example.com --set scheme=ftp
 ftp://example.com/
.fi
.IP "Redirect a URL"
.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se/we/are.html --redirect here.html
https://curl.se/we/here.html
.fi
.IP "Change port number"
This also shows how trurl will remove dot-dot sequences

.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se/we/../are.html --set port=8080
https://curl.se:8080/are.html
.fi
.IP "Extract the path from a URL"
.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se/we/are.html --get '{path}'
/we/are.html
.fi
.IP "Extract the port from a URL"
This gets the default port based on the scheme if the port is not set in the
URL.

.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se/we/are.html --get '{port}'
443
.fi
.IP "Append a path segment to a URL"
.nf
$ trurl --url https://curl.se/hello --append path=you
https://curl.se/hello/you
.fi
.IP "Append a query segment to a URL"
.nf
$ trurl --url "https://curl.se?name=hello" --append query=search=string
 https://curl.se/?name=hello&search=string
.fi
.IP "Read URLs from stdin"
.nf
$ cat urllist.txt | trurl --url-file -
\&...
.fi
.IP "Output JSON"
.nf
$ trurl "https://fake.host/hello#frag" --set user=::moo:: --json
[
  {
    "url": "https://%3a%3amoo%3a%3a@fake.host/hello#frag",
    "scheme": "https",
    "user": "::moo::",
    "host": "fake.host",
    "port": "443",
    "path": "/hello",
    "fragment": "frag"
  }
]
.fi
.IP "Remove tracking tuples from query"
.nf
$ trurl "https://curl.se?search=hey&utm_source=tracker" --trim query="utm_*"
https://curl.se/?search=hey
.fi
.IP "Show a specific query key value"
.nf
$ trurl "https://example.com?a=home&here=now&thisthen" -g '{query:a}'
home
.fi
.IP "Sort the key/value pairs in the query component"
.nf
$ trurl "https://example.com?b=a&c=b&a=c" --sort-query
https://example.com?a=c&b=a&c=b
.fi
.IP "Work with a query that uses a semicolon separator"
.nf
$ trurl "https://curl.se?search=fool;page=5" --trim query="search" --query-separator ";"
https://curl.se?page=5
.fi
.IP "Accept spaces in the URL path"
.nf
$ trurl "https://curl.se/this has space/index.html" --accept-space
https://curl.se/this%20has%20space/index.html
.fi
.SH WWW
https://curl.se/trurl