Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

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I use cURL a ton too, for when I want to make a one-off request, examine the response, and then throw it away. Here are some reasons why I'd reach for a tool like this:

• I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available

• I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another

• I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting

• I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organise them in a tree

• The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text

>• I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available

Requests are saved in .bash_history and easily greped from the command line. With fzf, it's addictively good. Responses are not saved, but it's not something I miss, but it could just be a lack of habit of mine.

>• I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another

Again, bash, a bit of scripting for me goes a long way.

>• I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting

That's a good one. I usually end up resorting to a real programing language like PHP or Python when I begin having to scape special characters much

>• I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organize them in a tree

Haven't felt the need, again, could be lack of habit.

>• The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text

I usually pipe it to jq or vim

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