This documentation is best viewed at [httpie.io/docs](https://httpie.org/docs).
You can select your corresponding HTTPie version as well as run examples directly from the browser using a [termible.io](https://termible.io?utm_source=httpie-readme) embedded terminal.
If you are reading this on GitHub, then this text covers the current *development* version.
Also works for other Debian-derived distributions like MX Linux, Linux Mint, deepin, Pop!_OS, KDE neon, Zorin OS, elementary OS, Kubuntu, Devuan, Linux Lite, Peppermint OS, Lubuntu, antiX, Xubuntu, etc.
If you want to try out the latest version of HTTPie that hasn't been officially released yet, you can install the development or unstable version directly from the master branch on GitHub. However, keep in mind that the development version is a work in progress and may not be as reliable as the stable version.
You can use the following command to install the development version of HTTPie on Linux, macOS, Windows, or FreeBSD operating systems. With this command, the code present in the `master` branch is downloaded and installed using `pip`.
To verify the installation, you can compare the [version identifier on GitHub](https://github.com/httpie/cli/blob/master/httpie/__init__.py#L6) with the one available on your machine. You can check the version of HTTPie on your machine by using the command `http --version`.
Use [GitHub API](https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/comments/#create-a-comment) to post a comment on an [issue](https://github.com/httpie/cli/issues/83) with [authentication](#authentication):
When you paste a URL into the terminal, you can even keep the `://` bit in the URL argument to quickly convert the URL into an HTTPie call just by adding a space after the protocol name.
If you find yourself manually constructing URLs with querystring parameters on the terminal, you may appreciate the `param==value` syntax for appending URL parameters.
With that, you don’t have to worry about escaping the `&` separators for your shell. Additionally, any special characters in the parameter name or value get automatically URL-escaped (as opposed to the parameters specified in the full URL, which HTTPie doesn’t modify).
You can even retrieve the `value` from a file by using the `param==@file` syntax. This would also effectively strip the newlines from the end. See [file based separators](#file-based-separators) for more examples.
Additionally, curl-like shorthand for localhost is supported.
This means that, for example, `:3000` would expand to `http://localhost:3000`
If the port is omitted, then port 80 is assumed.
```bash
$ http :/foo
```
```http
GET /foo HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
```
```bash
$ http :3000/bar
```
```http
GET /bar HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:3000
```
```bash
$ http :
```
```http
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
```
### Other default schemes
When HTTPie is invoked as `https` then the default scheme is `https://` (`$ https example.org` will make a request to `https://example.org`).
You can also use the `--default-scheme <URL_SCHEME>` option to create shortcuts for other protocols than HTTP (possibly supported via [plugins](https://pypi.org/search/?q=httpie)). Example for the [httpie-unixsocket](https://github.com/httpie/httpie-unixsocket) plugin:
| Data Fields `field=value` | Request data fields to be serialized as a JSON object (default), to be form-encoded (with `--form, -f`), or to be serialized as `multipart/form-data` (with `--multipart`) |
| Raw JSON fields `field:=json` | Useful when sending JSON and one or more fields need to be a `Boolean`, `Number`, nested `Object`, or an `Array`, e.g., `meals:='["ham","spam"]'` or `pies:=[1,2,3]` (note the quotes) |
| File upload fields `field@/dir/file`, `field@file;type=mime` | Only available with `--form`, `-f` and `--multipart`. For example `screenshot@~/Pictures/img.png`, or `'cv@cv.txt;type=text/markdown'`. With `--form`, the presence of a file field results in a `--multipart` request |
Note that the structured data fields aren’t the only way to specify request data:
[raw request body](#raw-request-body) is a mechanism for passing arbitrary request data.
You can use `\` to escape characters that shouldn’t be used as separators (or parts thereof). For instance, `foo\==bar` will become a data key/value pair (`foo=` and `bar`) instead of a URL parameter.
Often it is necessary to quote the values, e.g. `foo='bar baz'`.
If any of the field names or headers starts with a minus (e.g. `-fieldname`), you need to place all such items after the special token `--` to prevent confusion with `--arguments`:
$ http PUT pie.dev/put name=John email=john@example.org
```
```http
PUT / HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json, */*;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Content-Type: application/json
Host: pie.dev
{
"name": "John",
"email": "john@example.org"
}
```
### Default behavior
If your command includes some data [request items](#request-items), they are serialized as a JSON object by default. HTTPie also automatically sets the following headers, both of which can be overwritten:
You can use `--json, -j` to explicitly set `Accept` to `application/json` regardless of whether you are sending data (it’s a shortcut for setting the header via the usual header notation: `http url Accept:'application/json, */*;q=0.5'`).
Additionally, HTTPie will try to detect JSON responses even when the `Content-Type` is incorrectly `text/plain` or unknown.
### Non-string JSON fields
Non-string JSON fields use the `:=` separator, which allows you to embed arbitrary JSON data into the resulting JSON object.
Additionally, text and raw JSON files can also be embedded into fields using `=@` and `:=@`:
```bash
$ http PUT pie.dev/put \
name=John \ # String (default)
age:=29 \ # Raw JSON — Number
married:=false \ # Raw JSON — Boolean
hobbies:='["http", "pies"]' \ # Raw JSON — Array
favorite:='{"tool": "HTTPie"}' \ # Raw JSON — Object
bookmarks:=@files/data.json \ # Embed JSON file
description=@files/text.txt # Embed text file
```
```http
PUT /person/1 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json, */*;q=0.5
Content-Type: application/json
Host: pie.dev
{
"age": 29,
"hobbies": [
"http",
"pies"
],
"description": "John is a nice guy who likes pies.",
In the example above, the `search[type]` is an instruction for creating an object called `search`, and setting the `type` field of it to the given value (`"id"`).
Building arrays is also possible, through `[]` suffix (an append operation). This tells HTTPie to create an array in the given path (if there is not one already), and append the given value to that array.
Sending scalar JSON types (a single `null`, `true`, `false`, string or number) as the top-level object is impossible using the key/value syntax. But you can still pass it via [`--raw='<value>'`](#raw-request-body).
$ echo -n '{"hello": "world"}' | http POST pie.dev/post
```
```bash
$ http POST pie.dev/post <files/data.json
```
## Forms
Submitting forms is very similar to sending [JSON](#json) requests.
Often the only difference is in adding the `--form, -f` option, which ensures that data fields are serialized as, and `Content-Type` is set to `application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8`.
It is possible to make form data the implicit content type instead of JSON via the [config](#config) file.
If you specify a custom `Content-Type` header without including the boundary bit, HTTPie will add the boundary value (explicitly specified or auto-generated) to the header automatically:
You can read headers from a file by using the `:@` operator. This would also effectively strip the newlines from the end. See [file based separators](#file-based-separators) for more examples.
The `--max-headers=n` options allows you to control the number of headers HTTPie reads before giving up (the default `0`, i.e., there’s no limit).
```bash
$ http --max-headers=100 pie.dev/get
```
## Offline mode
Use `--offline` to construct HTTP requests without sending them anywhere.
With `--offline`, HTTPie builds a request based on the specified options and arguments, prints it to `stdout`, and then exits. It works completely offline; no network connection is ever made. This has a number of use cases, including:
Generating API documentation examples that you can copy & paste without sending a request:
```bash
$ http --offline POST server.chess/api/games API-Key:ZZZ w=magnus b=hikaru t=180 i=2
If you often deal with cookies in your requests, then you’d appreciate
the [sessions](#sessions) feature.
## Authentication
The currently supported authentication schemes are Basic and Digest (see [auth plugins](#auth-plugins) for more). There are two flags that control authentication:
| `--auth, -a` | Pass either a `username:password` pair or a `token` as the argument. If the selected authenticated method requires username/password combination and if you only specify a username (`-a username`), you’ll be prompted for the password before the request is sent. To send an empty password, pass `username:`. The `username:password@hostname` URL syntax is supported as well (but credentials passed via `-a` have higher priority) |
| `--auth-type, -A` | Specify the auth mechanism. Possible values are `basic`, `digest`, `bearer` or the name of any [auth plugins](#auth-plugins) you have installed. The default value is `basic` so it can often be omitted |
You can specify proxies to be used through the `--proxy` argument for each protocol (which is included in the value in case of redirects across protocols):
The response metadata section currently includes the total time elapsed. It’s the number of seconds between opening the network connection and downloading the last byte of response the body.
To _only_ show the response metadata, use `--meta, -m` (analogically to `--headers, -h` and `--body, -b`):
```bash
$ http --meta pie.dev/delay/1
```
```console
Elapsed time: 1.099171542s
```
The [extra verbose `-vv` output](#extra-verbose-output) includes the meta section by default. You can also show it in combination with other parts of the exchange via [`--print=m`](#what-parts-of-the-http-exchange-should-be-printed). For example, here we print it together with the response headers:
```bash
$ http --print=hm pie.dev/get
```
```http
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Elapsed time: 0.077538375s
```
Please note that it also includes time spent on formatting the output, which adds a small penalty. Also, if the body is not part of the output, [we don’t spend time downloading it](#conditional-body-download).
If you [use `--style` with one of the Pie themes](#colors-and-formatting), you’ll see the time information color-coded (green/yellow/orange/red) based on how long the exchange took.
When there is a new release available for your platform (for example; if you installed HTTPie through `pip`, it will check the latest version on `PyPI`), HTTPie will regularly warn you about the new update (once a week). If you want to disable this behavior, you can set `disable_update_warnings` to `true` in your [config](#config) file.
To see all the HTTP communication, i.e. the final request/response as well as any possible intermediary requests/responses, use the `--all` option.
The intermediary HTTP communication include followed redirects (with `--follow`), the first unauthorized request when HTTP digest authentication is used (`--auth=digest`), etc.
```bash
# Include all responses that lead to the final one:
$ http --all --follow pie.dev/redirect/3
```
The intermediary requests/responses are by default formatted according to `--print, -p` (and its shortcuts described above).
### Conditional body download
As an optimization, the response body is downloaded from the server only if it’s part of the output.
This is similar to performing a `HEAD` request, except that it applies to any HTTP method you use.
Let’s say that there is an API that returns the whole resource when it is updated, but you are only interested in the response headers to see the status code after an update:
Since you are only printing the HTTP headers here, the connection to the server is closed as soon as all the response headers have been received.
Therefore, bandwidth and time isn’t wasted downloading the body which you don’t care about.
The response headers are downloaded always, even if they are not part of the output
## Raw request body
In addition to crafting structured [JSON](#json) and [forms](#forms) requests with the [request items](#request-items) syntax, you can provide a raw request body that will be sent without further processing.
These two approaches for specifying request data (i.e., structured and raw) cannot be combined.
| `auto` | Follows your terminal ANSI color styles. This is the default style used by HTTPie |
| `default` | Default styles of the underlying Pygments library. Not actually used by default by HTTPie. You can enable it with `--style=default` |
| `pie-dark` | HTTPie’s original brand style. Also used in [HTTPie for Web and Desktop](https://httpie.io/product). |
| `pie-light` | Like `pie-dark`, but for terminals with light background colors. |
| `pie` | A generic version of `pie-dark` and `pie-light` themes that can work with any terminal background. Its universality requires compromises in terms of legibility, but it’s useful if you frequently switch your terminal between dark and light backgrounds. |
| `monokai` | A popular color scheme. Enable with `--style=monokai` |
| `fruity` | A bold, colorful scheme. Enable with `--style=fruity` |
| … | See `$ http --help` for all the possible `--style` values |
HTTPie looks at `Content-Type` to select the right syntax highlighter and formatter for each message body. If that fails (e.g., the server provides the wrong type), or you prefer a different treatment, you can manually overwrite the mime type for a response with `--response-mime`:
There are also two shortcuts that allow you to quickly disable and re-enable
sorting-related format options (currently it means JSON keys and headers):
`--unsorted` and `--sorted`.
This is something you will typically store as one of the default options in your [config](#config) file.
### Redirected output
HTTPie uses a different set of defaults for redirected output than for [terminal output](#terminal-output).
The differences being:
- Formatting and colors aren’t applied (unless `--pretty` is specified).
- Only the response body is printed (unless one of the [output options](#output-options) is set).
- Also, binary data isn’t suppressed.
The reason is to make piping HTTPie’s output to another programs and downloading files work with no extra flags.
Most of the time, only the raw response body is of an interest when the output is redirected.
Download a file:
```bash
$ http pie.dev/image/png > image.png
```
Download an image of an [Octocat](https://octodex.github.com/images/original.jpg), resize it using [ImageMagick](https://imagemagick.org/), and upload it elsewhere:
HTTPie tries to do its best to decode message bodies when printing them to the terminal correctly. It uses the encoding specified in the `Content-Type``charset` attribute. If a message doesn’t define its charset, we auto-detect it. For very short messages (1–32B), where auto-detection would be unreliable, we default to UTF-8. For cases when the response encoding is still incorrect, you can manually overwrite the response charset with `--response-charset`:
HTTPie features a download mode in which it acts similarly to `wget`.
When enabled using the `--download, -d` flag, response headers are printed to the terminal (`stderr`), and a progress bar is shown while the response body is being saved to a file.
There are three mutually exclusive ways through which HTTPie determines
the output filename (with decreasing priority):
1. You can explicitly provide it via `--output, -o`. The file gets overwritten if it already exists (or appended to with `--continue, -c`).
2. The server may specify the filename in the optional `Content-Disposition` response header. Any leading dots are stripped from a server-provided filename.
3. The last resort HTTPie uses is to generate the filename from a combination of the request URL and the response `Content-Type`. The initial URL is always used as the basis for the generated filename — even if there has been one or more redirects.
To prevent data loss by overwriting, HTTPie adds a unique numerical suffix to the filename when necessary (unless specified with `--output, -o`).
### Piping while downloading
You can also redirect the response body to another program while the response headers and progress are still shown in the terminal:
This allows for streaming and large file downloads without using too much memory.
However, when [colors and formatting](#colors-and-formatting) are applied, the whole response is buffered and only then processed at once.
### Disabling buffering
You can use the `--stream, -S` flag to make two things happen:
1. The output is flushed in much smaller chunks without any buffering, which makes HTTPie behave kind of like `tail -f` for URLs.
2. Streaming becomes enabled even when the output is prettified: It will be applied to each line of the response and flushed immediately. This makes it possible to have a nice output for long-lived requests, such as one to the [Twitter streaming API](https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tutorials/consuming-streaming-data).
# Send each new line (JSON object) to another URL as soon as it arrives from a streaming API:
$ http --stream pie.dev/stream/3 | while read line; do echo "$line" | http pie.dev/post ; done
```
## Sessions
By default, every request HTTPie makes is completely independent of any previous ones to the same host.
However, HTTPie also supports persistent sessions via the `--session=SESSION_NAME_OR_PATH` option.
In a session, custom [HTTP headers](#http-headers) (except for the ones starting with `Content-` or `If-`), [authentication](#authentication), and [cookies](#cookies) (manually specified or sent by the server) persist between requests to the same host.
That means session files can also be created and edited manually in a text editor—they are regular JSON.
It also means that they can be read by anyone who has access to the session file.
### Named sessions
You can create one or more named session per host. For example, this is how you can create a new session named `user1` for `pie.dev`:
```bash
$ http --session=user1 -a user1:password pie.dev/get X-Foo:Bar
```
From now on, you can refer to the session by its name (`user1`).
When you choose to use the session again, all previously specified authentication or HTTP headers will automatically be set:
```bash
$ http --session=user1 pie.dev/get
```
To create or reuse a different session, simply specify a different name:
```bash
$ http --session=user2 -a user2:password pie.dev/get X-Bar:Foo
```
Named sessions’ data is stored in JSON files inside the `sessions` subdirectory of the [config](#config) directory, typically `~/.config/httpie/sessions/<host>/<name>.json` (`%APPDATA%\httpie\sessions\<host>\<name>.json` on Windows).
When creating anonymous sessions, please remember to always include at least one `/`, even if the session files is located in the current directory (i.e. `--session=./session.json` instead of just `--session=session.json`), otherwise HTTPie assumes a named session instead.
### Readonly session
To use the original session file without updating it from the request/response exchange after it has been created, specify the session name via `--session-read-only=SESSION_NAME_OR_PATH` instead.
```bash
# If the session file doesn’t exist, then it is created:
To make a cookie domain _unbound_ (i.e., to make it available to all hosts, including throughout a cross-domain redirect chain), you can set the `domain` field to `null` in the session file:
There are three possible sources of persisted cookies within a session. They have the following storage priority: 1—response; 2—command line; 3—session file.
HTTPie may introduce changes in the session file format. When HTTPie detects an obsolete format, it shows a warning. You can upgrade your session files using the following commands:
Upgrade all existing [named sessions](#named-sessions) inside the `sessions` subfolder of your [config directory](https://httpie.io/docs/cli/config-file-directory):
Upgrading individual sessions requires you to specify the session's hostname. That allows HTTPie to find the correct file in the case of name sessions. Additionally, it allows it to correctly bind cookies when upgrading with [`--bind-cookies`](#session-upgrade-options).
Upgrade a single [named session](#named-sessions):
| `--bind-cookies` | Bind all previously [unbound cookies](#host-based-cookie-policy) to the session’s host ([context](https://github.com/httpie/cli/security/advisories/GHSA-9w4w-cpc8-h2fq)). |
To see the exact location for your installation, run `http --debug` and look for `config_dir` in the output.
The default location of the configuration file on most platforms is `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/httpie/config.json` (defaulting to `~/.config/httpie/config.json`).
However, it is not recommended modifying the default behavior in a way that would break your compatibility with the wider world as that may become confusing.
Default options from the config file, or specified any other way, can be unset for a particular invocation via `--no-OPTION` arguments passed via the command line (e.g., `--no-style` or `--no-session`).
## Scripting
When using HTTPie from shell scripts, it can be handy to set the `--check-status` flag.
It instructs HTTPie to exit with an error if the HTTP status is one of `3xx`, `4xx`, or `5xx`.
The exit status will be `3` (unless `--follow` is set), `4`, or `5`, respectively.
```bash
#!/bin/bash
if http --check-status --ignore-stdin --timeout=2.5 HEAD pie.dev/get &> /dev/null; then
It's important to note that without the `--ignore-stdin` option, HTTPie may appear to have stopped working (hang). This happens because, in situations where HTTPie is invoked outside of an interactive session, such as from a cron job, `stdin` is not connected to a terminal. This means that the rules for [redirected input](#redirected-input) will be followed. When `stdin` is redirected, HTTPie assumes that the input will contain the request body, and it waits for the input to be provided. But, since there is neither any input data nor an end-of-file (`EOF`) signal, HTTPie gets stuck. To avoid this problem, the `--ignore-stdin` flag should be used in scripts, unless data is being piped to HTTPie.
To prevent your program from becoming unresponsive when the server fails to respond, it's a good idea to use the `--timeout` option to set a connection timeout limit.
| `json` | Export the parser spec in JSON. The schema includes a top-level `version` parameter which should be interpreted in [semver](https://semver.org/). |
You can use any of these formats with `--format` parameter, but the default one is `json`.
The syntax of the command arguments closely correspond to the actual HTTP requests sent over the wire.
It has the advantage that it’s easy to remember and read.
You can often translate an HTTP request to an HTTPie argument list just by inlining the request elements.
For example, compare this HTTP request:
```http
POST /post HTTP/1.1
Host: pie.dev
X-API-Key: 123
User-Agent: Bacon/1.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
name=value&name2=value2
```
with the HTTPie command that sends it:
```bash
$ http -f POST pie.dev/post \
X-API-Key:123 \
User-Agent:Bacon/1.0 \
name=value \
name2=value2
```
Notice that both the order of elements and the syntax are very similar, and that only a small portion of the command is used to control HTTPie and doesn’t directly correspond to any part of the request (here, it’s only `-f` asking HTTPie to send a form request).
The two modes, `--pretty=all` (default for terminal) and `--pretty=none` (default for [redirected output](#redirected-output)), allow for both user-friendly interactive use and usage from scripts, where HTTPie serves as a generic HTTP client.
In the future, the command line syntax and some of the `--OPTIONS` may change slightly, as HTTPie improves and new features are added.
All changes are recorded in the [change log](#change-log).
[Jakub Roztocil](https://roztocil.co) ([@jakubroztocil](https://twitter.com/jakubroztocil)) created HTTPie and [these fine people](https://github.com/httpie/cli/blob/master/AUTHORS.md) have contributed.
