HttpShell

HttpShell is a cool tool that lets you send HTTP commands to a web server or REST API without breaking a sweat. Think of it like chatting with your server!

Easy Commands for Everyone

You can easily issue HTTP commands like HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. What’s great about it is that you get visual feedback, making debugging REST services way more interactive than using cURL.

Treat Servers Like Filesystems

With HttpShell, you can treat the server as if it's a filesystem. For example:

$ httpsh http://api.twitter.com/a/statuses

  api.twitter.com:/1/statuses > get public_timeline.json

This will give you a response like:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

  > content-length: 40945

  > vary: Accept-Encoding

  > x-transaction-mask: a6183ffa5f8ca943ff1b53b5644ef1140f40ebd7

  ...

Familiar Shell Commands

You can use familiar shell commands to navigate easily:

api.twitter.com:/1/statuses > cd ..

  api.twitter.com:/1/ > cd /

  api.twitter.com:/ >

Piping Output for Formatting

If you want to format your data, just pipe the output to external commands:

api.twitter.com:/1/statuses > get public_timeline.xml | xmllint -format -

  ...

  < statuses type="array" >

    < status >

    < created_at >Wed Dec 14 00:57:12 +0000 2011

    ...

Posting Data Made Simple

You can also post data to your server effortlessly:

$ httpsh http://localhost:28017

  localhost:28017:/ > post /foo/bar

  ... { "a" : 123456 }

  ... HTTP/1.0 201

  > content-type: text/plain;charset=utf-8

  > connection: close

  > x-ns: foo._defaultCollection

  > content-length: 15

  > x-action: bar

The response will be something simple like:

{ "ok" : true }

Using JSON with Web Forms

You can even use JSON to post to web forms with special notation! Here’s how:

somewebsite:/ > post /some/form/handler

  ... @{ ... "name": "Chris", ... "occupation": "Developer" ... }

This converts into name=Chris&occupation=Developer so it fits right in!

Setting Headers Easily

If you need to set headers, it's super simple too:

localhost:28017:/ > .headers Cookie:session=5cb9586618eea2374377bb1584

localhost:28017:/ > .headers User-Agent:AppleWebKit/535.13

localhost:28017:/ > .headers

  < Cookie: session=5cb9586618eea2374377bb1584

Installation

To install HttpShell:

python setup.py install

Or if pip is installed:

pip install httpshell

May require sudo to install!