jicea

Hi maintainer of Hurl [1] here, I'll be happy to answer any question!

If you're looking for a tool with a nice UI, Hurl might not be the ideal choice. We're focusing our tool on CLI usage and CI/CD integration.

On the other side, Hurl is a pure Open Source tool, we're not VC backed. The tool is given to the community by a big French telco Orange, which use it and has no intention to be in the software business. In a word, there is less chance for Hurl to fell into Postman or Insomnia fate.

[1]: https://hurl.dev

No, you got what's you write. If you want, you can see the run curl's command, save it in a script and replay it without Hurl. You can check the source code here [1]

[1]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl

You can use Hurl [1] an open source CLI tool based on plain text and libcurl! (I'm one of the maintainer)

[1]: https://hurl.dev

The "HTTP" format proposed in the article is the same we use with Hurl [1], an Open Source HTTP CLI based on plain text.

  POST http://httpbingo.org/anything/chat
  content-type: application/json
  
  {
      "message": "Hello!"
  }

We extend it a bit to add checks on response, and add request chaining, but it's basically HTTP 1.x as this article shows it. A lot of others tools have the same idea, with minor differences:

- Hurl (I'm one of the maintainer) https://hurl.dev

- HTTP Client https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c...

- httpYac https://httpyac.github.io

- restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el

- REST Client https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient

- verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb

And many more...

Worth noting, other tools have taken the YAML route (like Step CI https://stepci.com), JavaScript (k6 https://k6.io/docs/using-k6/http-requests/)... I'm biased of course, I've a tiny preference for the simple plain text format.

And of course, there are also GUI application (Postman, Insomnia, RecipeUI amon others)

[1]: https://hurl.dev

I maintain an Open Source HTTP client based on libcurl [1]. We have support for variables like {{foo}} and also add kind of filters (like these new curl functions that you can chain to refine values). It seems natural to have this kind of templating for an HTTP client now (for instance, when you want to make "templatized" script). Really a nice addition to curl.

[1]: https://hurl.dev

"2023 State of the API Report" should be titled "2023 State of Postman Usage Report". I don't say it has no value, but it's clearly tinted with Postman angle of view (and business alignment)

Very nice article. Some waterfalls are screenshots of various developper tools. Does someone know what how this one https://csswizardry.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/defer-wat... is produced?

A few hours on top in Hacker News, we went from 3,000 visits/day to 300,000 visits/days. Lesson learned to survive a Hacker News storm:

- use a cheap VPS (our is 5€/month)

- make all your site static HTML: turns out HTML can be served really efficiently

- no server load: search is done in JavaScript in the browser (can be better though)

- cache every resource

Our VPS's CPU is 10% flat, RAM usage 20%

Bonus:

- be gracefull to users: minimum JavaScript, zero analytics in the browser

- begin to use WebP and Avif for images. Avif is really amazing!

You can check:

- GitHub CI/CD integration example in the Hurl documentation [1]

- a blog post from GitLab about how to integrate Hurl in GitLab CI/CD [2]

[1]: https://hurl.dev/docs/tutorial/ci-cd-integration.html

[2]: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/12/14/how-to-continously-...

Would it be more clear if we put line numbers in Hurl file snippets (even on the home)? I like the simplicity of our docs, but I can understand that it isn't clear how to use it. By the way, that's why we have put an asciinema animation on the home page, starting with `vim my_file.hurl`

I can't speak for Postman, but at work we use Hurl intensively in our CI/CD. Test files are commited, and using comments in Hurl files serve as a documentation of requests workflows.

Another Hurl use case is, instead of testing APIs, you want to download datas. Like curl, Hurl can output an HTTP response body. Unlike curl, this response can be the last one of a complex workflow (data behind login for instance, you need to capture data from one request and inject in another request like CSRF tokens).

Disclaimer: I'm one of the Hurl maintainers.

We've a more "classic" changelog in GitHub [1], I see the blog post as an editorial view of the changelog: highlights of main features/changes with some context.

[1] https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl/releases/tag/4.0.0

Noted, I'll try to make it clearer. We’ve been more explicit on the samples page [1]

[1] https://hurl.dev/docs/samples.html

You can export Hurl file to JSON with hurlfmt. We've done this so you can go to another tool if you prefer and convert your tests. It may be a start. The Hurl parser is also available as a library through Rust crates.

Hi, maintainer of Hurl and avid reader of Hacker News for years. I've noted every advice for presentations (put a sample of your language asap, explain your concept every time succinctly, etc...). I've tried to put it in practice on hurl.dev so thank you for noticing it!

Hi maintainer here! Thanks a lot for the kind words!

I'm one of the maintainer of Hurl [1], an Open Source project on GitHub. I work at Orange, a French telco company, and the project is under the company umbrella. So we don't have any "Sponsor" information, it's rather Orange giving back to Open source community.

I can keep working on it provided there are indicators of adoption from outside Orange. In this case, the only KPI are stars and forks numbers. So stars are really important to us.

[1]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl

Intrigued by your comment, I've just tried it. Man, it's really working. It's really effective, I'll try to adapt to the colours and see if I keep it!

You could also try Hurl [1] which is a cli tool using plain text and libcurl for run and test HTTP requests. I'm one of the maintainer and very grateful to curl/libcurl! My project couldn't exist without it.

[1] https://hurl.dev

Shameless plug: why not switch to Hurl [1], an open source cli tool to run and test HTTP requests in plain text, with libcurl under the hood? (I'm one of the maintainer)

[1]: https://hurl.dev

Completely agree, I'm a brew user myself but find the site of MacPorts rather clean and modern. It's responsive and doesn't feel abandoned at all (particularly https://ports.macports.org which support Dark mode). Plus, using brew, I never go to the website so I don't think this is really important.

Make me appreciate more and more the login/create account flow of HN [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/login

I' m grateful for curl and libcurl. It's a gem of our stack, a strong and robust tool to build upon. I maintain a project [1] that can't exist without libcurl so a big thanks!

[1]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl

Rather depressing, but also it mirrors my own experience. Daily, I work on a shop website, POs ask to add tons of trackings scripts, and don't care about performance or technical debt. Quality is not a KPI anymore. I still find joy in developing an Open Source side project but I'm pessimist about the future of developers.

My favorite NES game has always been Elite [1]. It's really a marvelous gem, that, in my opinion, is not well known. Happy memories...

[1]: https://www.justgamesretro.com/nes/elite

Happy to answer your questions (I'm one of the maintainer of Hurl)!

On my iPhone, when I click on home links (let's say Webhooks & notifications), I'm redirected to the middle of the target page. I'm sure it's a small bug, but it's kind of sad that basic navigation is half broken. On my pet documentation site [1], I've chosen the boring way:

- fully static HTML (Jekyll)

- minimal JavaScript (especially no tracking)

- search is local

I find my site quite reactive without complicated setup and can focus on the doc content. It's also perfect for SEO, "for free"...

[1]: https://hurl.dev

No offense! I really think there’s a strong need for a « Mardowned » HTTP format, for documentation, tests etc… Lots of good solutions, Lama2 included.

Hi, maintainer of Hurl here [1]! We try to make a really simple syntax while enabling passing data between requests. I find Hurl syntax clean, but beauty seems to be in the eye of the beholder... Good luck with Lama2!

[1] https://hurl.dev

I wasn’t aware that Gradle has «gradle.lockfile» that describes the dependencies tree. Is it used in the Java/Kotlin world?