Using a proxy can be a good way to debug http issues. Unfourtunately setting the proxy on macOS globally does not apply to all command line utilities.
On Curl for example you can set the proxy using the --proxy
flag:
curl http://example.com --proxy 127.0.0.1:8080
Or by adding the following to your ~/.curlrc
configuration file for a more persistent setting:
proxy = 127.0.0.1:8080
A similar thing can be done with the wget
utility by editing the ~/.wgetrc
and adding:
http_proxy = http://127.0.0.1:8080