How to create a loop in bash that is waiting for a webserver to respond?

Question

How to create a loop in bash that is waiting for a webserver to respond?

It should print a \".\" every 10 seconds or so, and wait until the server starts to respond.

Answer 1

I wanted to limit the maximum number of attempts. Based on Thomas's accepted answer I made this:

attempt_counter=0
max_attempts=5

until $(curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --fail http://myhost:myport); do
    if [ ${attempt_counter} -eq ${max_attempts} ];then
      echo "Max attempts reached"
      exit 1
    fi

    printf '.'
    attempt_counter=$(($attempt_counter+1))
    sleep 5
done