Over the past couple of months I’ve received numerous messages asking me how I’ve made this website respond to cURL requests with JSON (a little like JSON Resumé). If you’re out of the loop, you can either curl -L hugo.md or check out this GIF:

It’s super simple to setup — I’ve done it with nginx and with Caddy. All it does is:

  1. Check the user agent on incoming requests to the root site (example.site/)
  2. If the user agent is cURL, respond with a JSON file

With nginx:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.site;
  root /home/you/www;

  location / {
    if ($http_user_agent ~* ^curl) {
      rewrite ^/$ "/path/to/about.json";
      break;
    }
  }
}

With Caddy, it’s even easier:

example.site {
    root /home/you/www
    rewrite {
        if {>User-Agent} has curl
        if {path} is /
        to /path/to/about.json
    }
}

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If you liked this post, you’ll probably enjoy one of my other projects, parrot.live 🐦 Try curl parrot.live to see it in action!