HTTP request and diff tools

There're two separate CLIs provided:

• xdiff: A diff tool for comparing HTTP requests. It could be used to compare the difference between production staging or two versions of the same API.
• xreq: A tool to build HTTP requests based on predefined profiles. It could be used to replace curl/httpie for building complicated HTTP requests.

xdiff

Configuration

You can configure multiple profiles for xdiff. Each profile is identified by a name. Inside a profile you can define the details of the two requests (method, url, query params, request headers, request body), and also what part of the response should be skipped for comparison (currently only headers could be skipped).

---
rust:
  request1:
    method: GET
    url: https://www.rust-lang.org/
    headers:
        user-agent: Aloha
    params:
      hello: world
  request2:
    method: GET
    url: https://www.rust-lang.org/
    params: {}
  response:
    skip_headers:
      - set-cookie
      - date
      - via
      - x-amz-cf-id

You could put the configuration in ~/.config/xdiff.yml, or /etc/xdiff.yml, or ~/xdiff.yml. The xdiff CLI will look for configuration from these paths.

How to use xdiff?

You can use cargo install xdiff to install it. Once finished you shall be able to use it.

➜ xdiff --help
xdiff 0.1.0
Diff API response

USAGE:
    xdiff [OPTIONS] --profile <PROFILE>

OPTIONS:
    -c, --config <CONFIG>      Path to the config file
    -e <EXTRA_PARAMS>          Extra parameters to pass to the API
    -h, --help                 Print help information
    -p, --profile <PROFILE>    API profile to use
    -V, --version              Print version information

An example:

xdiff -p todo -c requester/fixtures/diff.yml -e a=1 -e b=2

This will use the todo profile in the diff.yml defined in requester/fixtures, and add extra params for query string with a=1, b=2. Output look like this:

xreq

since xdiff needs to send and format request so this logic was extracted as a separate CLI xreq.

Configuration

You can configure multiple profiles for xreq. Each profile is identified by a name. Inside a profile you can define the details of the request (method, url, query params, request headers, request body).

---
rust:
  url: https://www.rust-lang.org/
post:
  url: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/comments
  params:
    postId: 1

You could put the configuration in ~/.config/xreq.yml, or /etc/xreq.yml, or ~/xreq.yml. The xreq CLI will look for configuration from these paths.

How to use xreq?

You can use cargo install xreq to install it. Once finished you shall be able to use it.

➜ xreq --help
xreq 0.1.0
HTTP request tool just as curl/httpie, but easier to use

USAGE:
    xreq [OPTIONS] --profile <PROFILE>

OPTIONS:
    -c, --config <CONFIG>      Path to the config file
    -e <EXTRA_PARAMS>          Extra parameters to pass to the API
    -h, --help                 Print help information
    -p, --profile <PROFILE>    API profile to use
    -V, --version              Print version information

An example:

xreq -p post -c requester/fixtures/req.yml -e a=1 -e b=2

This will use the todo profile in the req.yml defined in requester/fixtures, and add extra params for query string with a=1, b=2. Output look like this:

You could also use tools like jq to process its output. When xreq detected a pipe, it will skip printing status/headers, and skip the colorized format on http body. For example:

xreq -p post -c requester/fixtures/req.yml -e a=1 -e b=2 | jq ".[] | select (.id < 3)"

Output: