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Elegant HTTP CLI, HTTPie

· 2 min read
Haril Song
Haril Song
Owner, Software Engineer at 42dot

Overview​

CLI tool that can replace the curl command

If you are a developer who frequently uses Linux, you probably use the curl command often. It is an essential command for sending external API requests from a server, but it has the disadvantage of poor readability in the output. HTTPie is an interesting tool that can alleviate this drawback, so let's introduce it.

Install​

For Mac users, you can easily install it using brew.

brew install httpie

For CentOS, you can install it using yum.

yum install epel-release
yum install httpie

Usage​

First, here is how you would send a GET request using curl.

curl https://httpie.io/hello

curl-get

Now, let's compare it with HTTPie.

https httpie.io/hello

get

The readability is much better in every aspect of the command. The response and header values are included by default, so you can get various information at a glance without using separate commands.

Note that https and http are distinguished in the command.

http localhost:8080

You can send a POST request as described on the official website.

http -a USERNAME POST https://api.github.com/repos/httpie/httpie/issues/83/comments body='HTTPie is awesome! :heart:'

Various other features are explained on GitHub, so if you make good use of them, you can greatly improve productivity.

Reference​