rclone/docs/content/http.md

title	description
HTTP Remote	Read only remote for HTTP servers

{{< icon "fa fa-globe" >}} HTTP

The HTTP remote is a read only remote for reading files of a webserver. The webserver should provide file listings which rclone will read and turn into a remote. This has been tested with common webservers such as Apache/Nginx/Caddy and will likely work with file listings from most web servers. (If it doesn't then please file an issue, or send a pull request!)

Paths are specified as remote: or remote:path.

The remote: represents the configured url, and any path following it will be resolved relative to this url, according to the URL standard. This means with remote url https://beta.rclone.org/branch and path fix, the resolved URL will be https://beta.rclone.org/branch/fix, while with path /fix the resolved URL will be https://beta.rclone.org/fix as the absolute path is resolved from the root of the domain.

If the path following the remote: ends with / it will be assumed to point to a directory. If the path does not end with /, then a HEAD request is sent and the response used to decide if it it is treated as a file or a directory (run with -vv to see details). When --http-no-head is specified, a path without ending / is always assumed to be a file. If rclone incorrectly assumes the path is a file, the solution is to specify the path with ending /. When you know the path is a directory, ending it with / is always better as it avoids the initial HEAD request.

To just download a single file it is easier to use copyurl.

Configuration

Here is an example of how to make a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

No remotes found, make a new one?
n) New remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
n/s/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
[snip]
XX / HTTP Connection
   \ "http"
[snip]
Storage> http
URL of http host to connect to
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
 1 / Connect to example.com
   \ "https://example.com"
url> https://beta.rclone.org
Remote config
--------------------
[remote]
url = https://beta.rclone.org
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y
Current remotes:

Name                 Type
====                 ====
remote               http

e) Edit existing remote
n) New remote
d) Delete remote
r) Rename remote
c) Copy remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
e/n/d/r/c/s/q> q

This remote is called remote and can now be used like this

See all the top level directories

rclone lsd remote:

List the contents of a directory

rclone ls remote:directory

Sync the remote directory to /home/local/directory, deleting any excess files.

rclone sync -i remote:directory /home/local/directory

Read only

This remote is read only - you can't upload files to an HTTP server.

Modified time

Most HTTP servers store time accurate to 1 second.

Checksum

No checksums are stored.

Usage without a config file

Since the http remote only has one config parameter it is easy to use without a config file:

rclone lsd --http-url https://beta.rclone.org :http:

or:

rclone lsd :http,url='https://beta.rclone.org':

{{< rem autogenerated options start" - DO NOT EDIT - instead edit fs.RegInfo in backend/http/http.go then run make backenddocs" >}}

Standard options

Here are the standard options specific to http (http Connection).

--http-url

URL of http host to connect to.

E.g. "https://example.com", or "https://user:pass@example.com" to use a username and password.

Properties:

• Config: url
• Env Var: RCLONE_HTTP_URL
• Type: string
• Required: true

Advanced options

Here are the advanced options specific to http (http Connection).

--http-headers

Set HTTP headers for all transactions.

Use this to set additional HTTP headers for all transactions.

The input format is comma separated list of key,value pairs. Standard CSV encoding may be used.

For example, to set a Cookie use 'Cookie,name=value', or '"Cookie","name=value"'.

You can set multiple headers, e.g. '"Cookie","name=value","Authorization","xxx"'.

Properties:

• Config: headers
• Env Var: RCLONE_HTTP_HEADERS
• Type: CommaSepList
• Default:

--http-no-slash

Set this if the site doesn't end directories with /.

Use this if your target website does not use / on the end of directories.

A / on the end of a path is how rclone normally tells the difference between files and directories. If this flag is set, then rclone will treat all files with Content-Type: text/html as directories and read URLs from them rather than downloading them.

Note that this may cause rclone to confuse genuine HTML files with directories.

Properties:

• Config: no_slash
• Env Var: RCLONE_HTTP_NO_SLASH
• Type: bool
• Default: false

--http-no-head

Don't use HEAD requests.

HEAD requests are mainly used to find file sizes in dir listing. If your site is being very slow to load then you can try this option. Normally rclone does a HEAD request for each potential file in a directory listing to:

• find its size
• check it really exists
• check to see if it is a directory

If you set this option, rclone will not do the HEAD request. This will mean that directory listings are much quicker, but rclone won't have the times or sizes of any files, and some files that don't exist may be in the listing.

Properties:

• Config: no_head
• Env Var: RCLONE_HTTP_NO_HEAD
• Type: bool
• Default: false

{{< rem autogenerated options stop >}}

Limitations

rclone about is not supported by the HTTP backend. Backends without this capability cannot determine free space for an rclone mount or use policy mfs (most free space) as a member of an rclone union remote.

See List of backends that do not support rclone about and rclone about