Hurl

[mshafrir]

http://hurl.r09.railsrumble.com/

[defunkt]

Thanks for the comments everyone! The main idea here is that you can share Hurl URLs which others can modify and play with.

For example I can give you this URL: http://hurl.me/ufsmb1

And you can change 'json' to 'xml' to see what changes.

Hurl was inspired by sharing curl input and output over pastebins. We should probably make this more clear.

[derefr]

Easter egg: try entering the site's URL.

[f00]

Very, very cool.. and I love the name.

That said, I regularly test APIs using actual usernames and passwords via HTTP Basic Auth. It will be a cold day in hell before I toss my credentials in cleartext into a web form. :-)

I really like the syntax-highlighted, pretty-printed JSON output, though. Really handy.

[defunkt → f00]

We plan to open source Hurl so you can run it somewhere if you want (for auth reasons).

[rwolf → defunkt]

This is what I love to hear (now to get those Twiddlr kids to let me run a local instance...).

[tlrobinson]

A similar app, but as native OS X app (useful for localhost requests) http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/

[defunkt → tlrobinson]

HTTPClient is great and was a big influence on Hurl (for instance we auto-complete headers just like HTTPClient does).

[MaysonL → defunkt]

I can't seem to get Hurl to send application/json content. Any ideas?

A few minutes later: everything seems to give the error:

Cannot allocate memory - fork(2)

[defunkt → MaysonL]

Yeah you guys crashed it :P

I'm workin' on bringing it back up.

[chaosmachine]

It's ok, but Firebug covers this pretty well already.

[defunkt → chaosmachine]

I commented about this further down but the main idea is you can share Hurls which others can modify and play with, e.g. http://hurl.me/ufsmb1

[mikeytown2]

After doing some tests, it appears that gzip doesn't work.

[charlesju]

I use http://code.google.com/p/rest-client/. But cool site none-the-less.

[est]

Why don't we make something like socket2http_get

    http://example.com/tcp?address=example.com:80&send=GET+/+HTTP/1.1%0D%0AHOST:+example.com%0D%0A%0D%0A

Oh wait... did I just re-invented HTTP 1.1 Connect?

[oomkiller]

I'll stick with HTTP Client for OS X, handles everything I need it for!

[wglb]

Cool site, but I would lose the fluorescent dots filling each margin.

[extension]

Very slick, but it really needs a JSON pretty printer in addition to the XML one. Most JSON services just send one huge line, which is exactly how Hurl displays it.

[defunkt → extension]

Can you give me an example URL? Sounds like a bug.

We do pretty print JSON: http://hurl.me/ufsmb1

[extension → defunkt]

http://hurl.it/hurls/7249f0ef9428c30c52e8e739eace1ba365fa24c...

Ah, I assume you are relying on the MIME type to be application/json, which is far from universal. A heuristic JSON detector shouldn't be hard.

[cousin_it]

Why no way to enter a raw POST body instead of key-value pairs? Could've been seriously useful for some web services.

[defunkt → cousin_it]

Coming soon.

[maelstrom]

This is seriously news? I could write this app in 10 lines of code, or am I missing something important?

[tjogin → maelstrom]

I think you meant that you can reproduce a fraction of this app's functionality, and present it in an unattractive way with really bad useability, in ten lines of code. And even then you'd be exaggerating.

[texel → maelstrom]

Yes, perhaps you are. First, watch the video: http://vimeo.com/6238577

Second, realize that this was developed from start to finish in 48 hours, by some not untalented people... they seem to have put a lot of thought into it, and the details really show.

Third, saying you could do anything nontrivial in "10 lines of code" reminds me of this guy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678501

[maelstrom → texel]

Sorry, making an http request and showing the response in headers qualifies as trivial in most modern programming languages.

[pvg → texel]

First, watch the video?

Doesn't that seem to emphasize the guy's point? It seems like a neat if simplistic little tool and if you have to watch a video to tell how it's something more...

[defunkt → pvg]

Yeah, it does.

Sounds like we should change this:

  Hurl makes HTTP requests.
  Enter a URL, set some headers, then view the response.
  Perfect for APIs.

To something like this:

  Hurl makes HTTP requests.
  Enter a URL, set some headers, get a response, then share it with others.
  Perfect for demoing and debugging APIs.

[mikeytown2 → texel]

Less then 250 lines of code: http://api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_http_request/7

[brown9-2 → maelstrom]

the ability to link to the responses / output seems like it might be useful for debugging and helping others

[daveungerer]

Love the unicorn puking a rainbow on their 404 error page.

[leahculver → daveungerer]

Thanks! Me too.