Accessing a URL on SSH without using a web browser

Question

I would like to find a way to open a URL without using a web browser (which makes my computer system run very slow).

Is there an easy way to achieve this on a command prompt using SSH to access another network?

Answer 1

ok...try this

from your local computer create an ssh connection forwarding local port 8080 to their web server

ssh  -L 8080:destcomputer.domain.com:80 destcomputer.domain.com

then you can run any browser you like on you local computer and connect to

localhost:8080

this should connect you to the webserver destcomputer.domain.com

Answer 2

You can always use elinks in your SSH session. It's a great in-session SSH browser.

If you're just looking to download files, you can just wget them (wget http://test.com/file.html).

EDIT

Let's say you need to download http://test.com/file.pdf, but you require some sort of login first (as it sounded in your comment):

You'd login through SSH:

$ localmachine ~> ssh user@machine
user@machine's password: <password>
$ remotemachine ~> (elinks/links/lynx) http://test.com/login

You'd navigate around the site and log in, and when you select the URL of the file you want to download, links/elinks should ask you where you want to save the file. You can save that file to the machine you're SSH'd into, and scp it to your machine. If you need any more information, let me know :)

METHOD 2

If you have direct access to the file (say http://test.com/file.pdf) you can just run curl -O http://test.com/file.pdf or wget http://test.com/file.pdf and it will be saved to the current directory (every single machine I've ever SSH'd into has either wget or curl).

Answer 3

Other text-mode browsers include Lynx, Links and Links 2 (with graphics with or without the X Window System, but not over ssh).

Answer 4

try

lynx 

its an older browser