HTTPie: cURL for humans

HTTPie is a CLI frontend for python-requests build out of frustration from using curl. 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-highlighed if its Content-Type is known to Pygments (unless the output is redirected).

Installation

pip install httpie

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 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:

$ http -h
usage: http [-h] [--json | --form] [--traceback] [--ugly] [--headers | --body]
            [--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 be raised
                        by `requests`.
  --ugly, -u            Do not prettify the response.
  --headers, -t         Print only the response headers.
  --body, -b            Print only the response body.
  --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).