HTTPie: cURL for humans

HTTPie is a CLI frontend for python-requests built out of frustration. It provides an http command that can be used to easily issue HTTP requests. It is meant to be used by humans to interact with HTTP-based APIs and web servers. The response headers are colorized and the body is syntax-highlighted if its Content-Type is known to Pygments (unless the output is redirected).

Installation

Latest stable version using pip:

pip install -U httpie
# easy_install httpie

Master:

pip install -U https://github.com/jkbr/httpie/tarball/master

Usage

http [flags] METHOD URL [header:value | data-field-name=value]*

The default request Content-Type is application/json and data fields are automatically serialized as a JSON Object, so this:

http PATCH api.example.com/person/1 X-API-Token:123 name=John email=john@example.org

Will issue the following request:

PATCH /person/1 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: HTTPie/0.1
X-API-Token: 123
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8

{"name": "John", "email": "john@example.org"}

You can pass other types then just strings using the field:=value notation. It allows you to set arbitrary JSON to the data fields:

http PUT httpie.org/pies bool:=true list:=[1,2,3] 'object:={"a": "b", "c": "d"}'

Produces the following JSON request:

{"bool": true, "list": [1, 2, 3], "object": {"a": "b", "c": "d"}}

You can use the --form flag to set Content-Type and serialize the data as application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

The data to be sent can also be passed via stdin:

http PUT api.example.com/person/1 X-API-Token:123 < person.json

Most of the flags mirror the arguments you would use with requests.request. See http -h:

usage: http [-h] [--json | --form] [--traceback] [--ugly] [--headers | --body] [--request] [--style STYLE] [--auth AUTH] [--verify VERIFY] [--proxy PROXY] [--allow-redirects] [--file PATH] [--timeout TIMEOUT] method URL [item [item ...]]

HTTPie - cURL for humans.

positional arguments: method HTTP method to be used for the request (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, ...). URL Protocol defaults to http:// if the URL does not include it. item HTTP header (key:value) or data field (key=value)

optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --json, -j Serialize data items as a JSON object and set Content- Type to application/json, if not specified. --form, -f Serialize data items as form values and set Content- Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded, if not specified. --traceback Print a full exception traceback should one occur. --ugly, -u Do not prettify the response. --headers, -t Print only the response headers. --body, -b Print only the response body. --request, -r Print only the response body. --style STYLE, -s STYLE Output coloring style, one of autumn, borland, bw, colorful, default, emacs, friendly, fruity, manni, monokai, murphy, native, pastie, perldoc, solarized, tango, trac, vim, vs. Defaults to solarized. --auth AUTH, -a AUTH username:password --verify VERIFY Set to "yes" to check the host's SSL certificate. You can also pass the path to a CA_BUNDLE file for private certs. You can also set the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable. --proxy PROXY String mapping protocol to the URL of the proxy (e.g. http:foo.bar:3128). --allow-redirects Set this flag if full redirects are allowed (e.g. re- POST-ing of data at new Location) --file PATH File to multipart upload --timeout TIMEOUT Float describes the timeout of the request (Use socket.setdefaulttimeout() as fallback).