bcantoni / echotest

A simple "echo" webservice for testing

Echo Webservice

A simple webservice call which echos back data about the request. Can be useful for testing and debugging webservice clients.

Inspired by http://respondto.it/ and http://requestb.in/ (both of which are no longer in service). See my blog post Recent HTTP Request Inspector Services for an updated list of similar services.

http://httpbin.org/ is similar with lot of additional controls about the response generation.

Usage

Make a request to the Echo service using Curl or your webservice client or app:

http://scooterlabs.com/echo
http://scooterlabs.com/echo.json
http://scooterlabs.com/echo.xml

By default, the service responds with plain text, but can return JSON or XML.

Data Returned

In all data formats, the following data is returned:

• method: the HTTP method used (GET, HEAD, POST, etc.)
• headers: all HTTP headers received
• request: all data parameters (query parameters or POST data)
• client_ip: best guess at originating client IP address (from HTTP headers)
• time_utc: request time (UTC)

Examples

Plain text response:

$ curl http://scooterlabs.com/echo
Array
(
    [method] => GET
    [headers] => Array
        (
            [User-Agent] => curl/7.19.7 (universal-apple-darwin10.0) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8r zlib/1.2.3
            [Host] => scooterlabs.com
            [Accept] => */*
        )

    [request] => Array
        (
            [foo] => bar
        )

    [client_ip] => 68.125.160.82
    [time_utc] => 2012-01-08T21:33:28+0000
    [info] => Echo service from Scooterlabs (http://www.scooterlabs.com)
)

Plain text response with public IP address:

$ curl http://scooterlabs.com/echo?ip
10.11.12.13

JSON response:

$ curl --silent curl http://scooterlabs.com/echo.json?foo=bar | json_xs
{
   "info" : "Echo service from Scooterlabs (http://www.scooterlabs.com)",
   "request" : {
      "foo" : "bar"
   },
   "headers" : {
      "User-Agent" : "curl/7.21.3 (i386-portbld-freebsd7.3) libcurl/7.21.3 OpenSSL/1.0.0e zlib/1.2.3 libidn/1.22",
      "Accept" : "*/*",
      "Host" : "scooterlabs.com"
   },
   "client_ip" : "66.39.158.129",
   "time_utc" : "2012-01-08T22:07:54+0000",
   "method" : "GET"
}

XML response:

$ curl --silent http://scooterlabs.com/echo.xml?foo=bar | xml_pp

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<echo>
  <method>GET</method>
  <headers>
    <User-Agent>curl/7.19.7 (universal-apple-darwin10.0) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8r zlib/1.2.3</User-Agent>
    <Host>scooterlabs.com</Host>
    <Accept>*/*</Accept>
  </headers>
  <request>
    <foo>bar</foo>
  </request>
  <client_ip>68.122.10.221</client_ip>
  <time_utc>2012-03-24T17:05:49+0000</time_utc>
  <info>Echo service from Scooterlabs (http://www.scooterlabs.com)</info>
</echo>

Installation

To run on your own server, install echo.php file to a suitable location and add the following to your Apache config or local .htaccess file:

# Echo test script
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^echo /echo.php [L]
</IfModule>

If you install echo.php into a location other than the root of your web server, you'll need to adjust the rewrite rules a bit.