http-diff 0.0.2

http-diff

CLI tool to verify consistency across web server versions. Ideal for large-scale refactors, sanity tests and maintaining data integrity across versions.

Archives of precompiled binaries for http-diff are available for macOS and Linux on every release.

Dual-licensed under MIT or the UNLICENSE.

The tool works by looking at the configuration file that can be specified by --config argument.

http-diff --config=./config.json

• ./config.json - is the default value for this argument so it can be omitted.

Config example:

{
  "domains": [
    {
      "domain": "http://domain-a.com/",
      "headers": {
        "cookie": "auth=secret"
      }
    },
    "http://stage.domain-a.com"
  ],
  "endpoints": [
    {
      "endpoint": "/health"
    },
    {
      "endpoint": "/api/v1/users/<userId>",
      "http_method": "GET",
      "response_processor": [
        "jq",
        "del(.body.timestamp)"
      ],
      "headers": {
        "X-custom": "custom-header"
      }
    },
    {
      "endpoint": "/api/v1/products?omit_id=<productId>&include_empty=<include_empty>",
      "request_builder": [
        "python3",
        "add_auth_to_requests.py"
      ],
      "variables": {
        "include_empty": [
          "true",
          "false"
        ]
      }
    }
  ],
  "variables": {
    "userId": [
      123,
      444
    ],
    "productId": "UUID"
  }
}

this config will be translated to following:

• GET request with {"cookie":"auth=secret"} in headers will be issued to http://domain-a.com/health and response be compared to response of GET http://stage.domain-a.com/health without any headers.

• Next endpoint /api/v1/users/<userId> has variable defined in it - <userId>. Anything within the brackets considered a variable name. In this case - userId. Variable then is looked up in the global variables property. In this case userId has two values: 123 and 444. This will be mapped to following requests:

  • GET http://domain-a.com/users/123 with {"cookie":"auth=secret","X-custom":"custom-header"} in headers and compared with GET http://stage.domain-a.com/users/123 with {"X-custom":"custom-header"} in headers.
  • GET http://domain-a.com/users/444 with {"cookie":"auth=secret","X-custom":"custom-header"} in headers and compared with GET http://stage.domain-a.com/users/444 with {"X-custom":"custom-header"} in headers.

  Before comparing any response, response_processor will be applied. This endpoint has following preprocessor: ["jq", "del(.body.timestamp)"]. Preprocessor is an external command that will be called with any arguments, before comparing responses. In this case after request to http://domain-a.com/users/123 and request to http://stage.domain-a.com/users/123 each response will passed to jq 'del(.body.timestamp)' which basically will remove the timestamp field from the body. timestamp field will be omitted from the compare process. response_processor can be any program, script or cli tool you can think of. Anything program that accepts stdin, and outputs to stdout. Output then will be compared. Not the original response.

• Next endpoint (/api/v1/products?omit_id=&include_empty=<include_empty>) will be mapped to:

  • GET http://domain-a.com/api/v1/products?omit_id=22fae888-7bf9-45d6-87f4-83087cc80ba1&include_empty=true with {"cookie":"auth=secret"} in headers and compared with GET http://domain-a.com/api/v1/products?omit_id=22fae888-7bf9-45d6-87f4-83087cc80ba1&include_empty=true without custom headers. productId variable has UUID value. This is a 'generator' variable. Random uuid will be generated and passed to both requests. include_empty variable has two values: true and false. These requests will use true, next one will be false.
  • GET http://domain-a.com/api/v1/products?omit_id=4558903b-d4a6-46e8-869e-1b77677832f4&include_empty=false with {"cookie":"auth=secret"} in headers and compared with GET http://domain-a.com/api/v1/products?omit_id=4558903b-d4a6-46e8-869e-1b77677832f4&include_empty=false without custom headers. productId gets new random uuid for both requests. include_empty becomes false.

  Before executing any requests, request_builder command will be applied on each request. In this case python3 add_auth_to_requests.py will be executed 4 times, before each request. request_builder gives you option to modify request in any possible way. We can add headers here, remove, modify the body, handle complicated authentication methods etc. Same as the response_processor, request_builder gets an stdin in the following structure, and expects stdout with the same structure:

  {
    "uri": "string",
    "http_method": "GET | POST | PUT | PATCH | DELETE",
    "headers": "key value headers map",
    "body": "string"
  }
  

Requirements

• Latest rust installed when building from source

Installation

Archives are available on every release as well as .deb files for Linux. Autocomplete for arguments and man pages are included.

Developing

• cargo run - for development
• cargo test - to run tests
• cargo build -r - to build in release mode