Make HTTP requests from your browser

http://hurl.it/?

by llambda • 15 years ago

142 66 15 years ago

hurl.it

pors2• 15 years ago

Sooo, web based curl? Amazing! #not

ceejayoz2• 15 years ago

I take it you've never had "What's curl?" as a response when trying to show someone an API is working fine?

pors2• 15 years ago

Well, maybe you're right. I assumed that people programming against REST API's know basic tools like curl, but apparently I got that wrong.

taf2• 15 years ago

Very useful - to send a curl to someone - to explain why a response is incorrect or provide context about a service response... Sure you could use curl + gist - but there is something I nicer here - for example on my iPhone I could use hurl.it to explain a bad response via email without having to drop into a shell... Great service thanks!

secure• 15 years ago

So my browser will send an HTTP request to this website which in turn sends an HTTP request? We need to go deeper…

wavephorm• 15 years ago

What I want is a website that can now render that http response into a fully formed webpage and display that in my browser.

jgeralnik• 15 years ago

And use that newly generated website to make another http request!

stanleydrew2• 15 years ago

Source is here:

https://github.com/defunkt/hurl

It's a pretty thin proxy.

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

Sadly Hurl won't make requests to itself.

bryanh3• 15 years ago

I would pay for a better hurl.it (common templates, saved responses, etc, etc...).

It's been an absolutely indispensable tools for debugging (crazy) API's while developing https://zapier.com.

sirn• 15 years ago

Have you considered using something like Charles Proxy[1] instead?

[1] http://www.charlesproxy.com/

bryanh3• 15 years ago

I have not. Brilliant link. Thank you!

aw3c2• 15 years ago

There is some FOSS alternative if I recall correctly but I forgot the name. I think it was written in Java.

johns4• 15 years ago

No need to pay, we (Twilio) are now actively maintaining it and going to be adding some new features. Common templates exists (not documented) yet. You can put values in URL parameters and the fields will autopopulate effectively giving you URL-based templates. Responses are already saved, click the permalink to get back to them later.

If you have any other feedback items, feel free to post them here or on https://github.com/twilio/hurl and we'll take a look at them. Pull requests are even better.

bryanh3• 15 years ago

Had no clue this was open source. Wonderful.

suresk• 15 years ago

If you're on OS X, I sell one for $2 on the Mac App Store - http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/. I'm working on a major update, and I'd be interested in hearing some more details about the features that would make a tool like this useful to you.

If you (or anyone else on HN) want to check it out but don't want to shell out a few bucks for it, send me an email (<my username>@gmail.com) and I'll get you a coupon code for a free copy.

rhplus• 15 years ago

Fiddler is a very useful HTTP proxy debugger for Windows.

http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/

sc00ter• 15 years ago

For specific APIs, apigee have a great tool: http://apigee.com/about/products/free

A hurl.it along those lines would be very useful.

aj• 15 years ago

Have you tried Firefox's Poster Addon? It's absolutely brilliant for simulating HTTP requests

raesene2• 15 years ago

Interesting idea, could be very useful. One thing with this kind of service is always how they handle validation of data from the 3rd party service (eg, in headers). So as an example http://hurl.it/hurls/db870b49c7203ec9acb47ba7769c126146b1768... executes javascript in the context of their site... (just a pop-up box with hi, but could be any script..)

johns4• 15 years ago

A pull request or issue created on https://github.com/twilio/hurl would be fantastic :)

nbpoole• 15 years ago

Done ;-)

https://github.com/twilio/hurl/pull/9

mtrimpe• 15 years ago

Minor bug-report: when you keep clicking on the 'Send' button continuously it will occasionally show the JSON response in-browser instead of updating the UI.

And no, I'm not crazy. I was trying to test GitHub's rate-limiting. ;)

johns4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the report, can you put this into the issues list on https://github.com/twilio/hurl?

godDLL• 15 years ago

Do you have some limits in place, or can I just expect it to proxy all of my web traffic when I want it to (which I can do with one JS statement right on this page)? Magic WebKit Inspector is going to ruin your hosting bill.

nuttendorfer• 15 years ago

This is useful if you are on systems where curl is not easily available. Helped a few times!

slig• 15 years ago

If you're on OSX, take a look on http://ditchnet.org/httpclient/

strags• 15 years ago

Homer: They have HTTP in browsers now?

FuzzyDunlop• 15 years ago

See also: XHR Poster (Chrome extension) [1]

I couldn't live without it.

[1] http://goo.gl/UFSdZ

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

> Make HTTP requests from your browser

Ironically, this is exactly what the browser is for.

lucisferre• 15 years ago

Yeah I had to read the title twice, just to make sure I read it correctly.

zalew• 15 years ago

exactly. I thought: uhm, isn't it what I'm doing right now?

stanleydrew2• 15 years ago

Unless you want to make put or delete requests.

tomblomfield3• 15 years ago

Yes, but "Make HTTP requests with custom action, headers & body from your browser" isn't as snappy.

dools• 15 years ago

If you just put the word "custom" in there I reckon it would make a big difference ;)

WA2• 15 years ago

Hurl http://victim.org/index.php?a=;DROP DATABASE users --

What I want to say is that services like this have a security flaw by design which allows random people to execute strange statements in the name of Hurl.

There are certainly other ways to execute malicious HTTP requests (for example, let the Google Bot do it), but still, it should be pointed out.

tomblomfield3• 15 years ago

By "services like this", I hope you mean websites that are vulnerable to SQL injection, and not Hurl itself?

Hoping that an attacker can't use curl probably isn't a good security solution...

WA2• 15 years ago

Yes, not Hurl itself. But Hurl can be used to execute malicious statements.

It is a difference, whether an attacker uses his own IP address (or a setup with various VPNs and proxies) or uses Hurl for it so that the target website sees only Hurl's IP in its logs.

In times of free WiFi, the traceability of malicious requests is definitely reduced anyway, but Hurl could potentially add another layer that can be used by an attacker to obscure his/her origin. I'm not saying that this is a major security issue, it is just a flaw by design, which I wanted to point out.

evmar• 15 years ago

You can make a browser GET or POST to any arbitrary URL already via JavaScript.

gcb• 15 years ago

On mobile so i can't check myself: does The BROWSER makes the request by some clever way? Or simple server side script does it?

lancefisher• 15 years ago

It's a ruby app, and uses curl on the server to make the request: https://github.com/defunkt/hurl/blob/master/app/app.rb

dmn001• 15 years ago

server side:

http://checkip.dyndns.com/ -> http://hurl.it/hurls/6fb24ac23d7c64a7edbcfceecd77c3d02586416...

127.0.0.1 -> http://hurl.it/hurls/7ad9448295a320acfe11160f0a8986fa591329f...

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

Meh, if abuse is really a problem Hurl could log requests and cooperate with law enforcement to trace it right back to you.

If an attacker is relying on using Hurl as their only source of anonymity they're not very competent.

moocow01• 15 years ago

Yeah they are potentially liable to the same sort of issues that proxies are which can make for a legally vulnerable service - unfortunate but true

ma2rten• 15 years ago

There is a http header, which you can set as proxy which reveals the ip of the original requester. Maybe that would be a good first step.

maybemaybenot• 15 years ago

That's kind of handy for looking to see where irritating shortened links are redirecting - e.g. t.co or bit.ly

kami8845• 15 years ago

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ gives you an image too :)

Hunterhdolan• 15 years ago

Yeah... thats the funny thing about web browsers... the tend to do that

tomblomfield3• 15 years ago

Useful service, but this has been around for many months now..

johns4• 15 years ago

Hurl.it was originally created by Chris Wanstranth and Leah Culver at the 2009 Rails Rumble. We (Twilio) just took over maintenance of the project because it has some obvious utility when testing URL callbacks and webhooks. We want to make some improvements to it, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. You can post them here or create an issue on the current home of the project on Github: https://github.com/twilio/hurl

And you can follow @hurlit for updates

mountaineer• 15 years ago

It is a great utility, thanks for taking it over and giving it more stability.

meow• 15 years ago

It will be gr8 if you can add OAuth signing support to hurl. Testing urls that need to be signed with OAuth is a major pain point.

thezilch• 15 years ago

You have may find MySpace's tool [0] or Google's OAuth Playground [0] or OAuth 2.0 Playground [1] helpful.

[0] http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=OAuth_Test... [1] http://googlecodesamples.com/oauth_playground/ [2] https://code.google.com/oauthplayground/

aurelianito• 15 years ago

It would be great if instead of a website you port it to a browser plug-in. It would achieve several things:

* Better security for the user (the paranoid in me do not want to send my credentials through a third party site).

* It could use the credentials stored in the browser (cookies, basic-auth, etc).

* The IP of the requester would not be hidden, allowing IP filtering for development servers.

* It could run on a PC that is not connected to internet.

bgruber• 15 years ago

For chrome, I like using the "REST Console" extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cokgbflfommojglbmb...), which I believe has all of the benefits you listed. The "credentials stored in a browser" thing is the main reason for me to be using it.

mcherm• 15 years ago

For Firefox I recommend Poster: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/poster/

Terretta• 15 years ago

Older and better (a point of opinion):

http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

Since October 1999, actually.

drp• 15 years ago

Something fun to point it at: http://httpong.com

Particularly http://httpong.com/response but the other parts can show you what hurl.it is sending.

johtso• 15 years ago

Or http://httpbin.org

ssfak• 15 years ago

Somewhat similar but more useful for debugging "HTTP caching" by Mark Nottingham: redbot (http://redbot.org/)

obeattie• 15 years ago

I've used this extensively before; brilliant little service, but I've recently started using the "REST Console" Chrome extension, which is bloody brilliant:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cokgbflfommojglbmb...

Make HTTP requests from your browser

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