ctsrc / lazyboi

The laziest possible way to send raw HTTP POST data

lazyboi – the laziest possible way to send raw HTTP POST data

lazyboi is a bash script which makes it fast and easy to send raw HTTP POST requests to servers, for example to send some JSON to an API end-point that you are developing on your machine, or to send some test-data to an API that you are integrating with.

Using curl for this purpose from the commandline can be cumbersome if you have multiple headers that need to be specified, or if you are submitting complex JSON data. Doubly so when you need to make changes to the request headers and the data. Editing long commandline invocations; no bueno.

Several great tools exist for interacting with HTTP APIs. But sometimes those tools are overkill and you just want to submit some headers and data, and to tweak those headers and data a little bit all in one place in raw form.

That is what lazyboi lets you do – it embeds a raw HTTP request that you can easily edit with your favorite source code editor, and which you then submit to the server by running the script. Edit and run. Edit and run.

Example embedded HTTP request:

POST /hello/ HTTP/1.1
Host: $host:$port
User-Agent: lazyboi/$script_version
Accept: application/vnd.example.api-v2.hello+json, application/json;q=0.8, */*;q=0.2
Connection: close
Authorization: Bearer ~Un8G-M238/5S/+=
X-Quux: 42
Content-Length: $content_length
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "baz": true,
  "hoge": "Wibble, wobble!"
}

Usage

lazyboi _dest_ [_port_]

lazyboi -v

lazyboi -h

Options and arguments

-v, --version: Display the script version.

-h, --help: Display usage information and examples.

dest: Numerical IP address or a symbolic hostname.

port: Numeric port number.

Examples

Send your HTTP request to a server listening on port 8080 of localhost.

lazyboi 127.0.0.1 8080

Send your HTTP request to the default port (80) of www.example.com.

lazyboi www.example.com

Installation

If you retrieved lazyboi by means of git clone then it should already be executable. Otherwise, make it so that it is;

chmod 755 lazyboi

Put lazyboi in some directory that is in your $PATH. For example, if you have ~/bin/ in your $PATH then that is an appropriate place to put it.

If ~/bin/ is not in your $PATH or ~/bin/ does not exist then you should crate ~/bin/ and add it to your $PATH, and then ~/bin/ is an appropriate place to put lazyboi for you as well.

mkdir -p ~/bin/
cp lazyboi ~/bin/

And don't forget to add ~/bin/ to your $PATH if it's not there already.