Posting is a powerful HTTP client which brings Postman-like functionality to your terminal. It works over SSH, stores collections in a Git-friendly format, and can be operated efficiently using both keyboard and mouse.
Posting is still under development and not yet feature complete.
The UI, config, and request format is subject to change while the version specifier contains a b suffix.
Some notable missing features include pre/post-request scripts, and the ability to send files. Also, some of the existing features are still being fleshed out.
Posting can be installed via pipx:
pipx install postingPython 3.11 or later is required.
More installation methods (brew, etc) will be added soon.
Requests can be stored directly on your file system.
Each request is stored as a simple YAML file, suffixed with .posting.yaml - easy to read, understand, and version control!
Here's a quick example of a *.posting.yaml file.
name: Create user
description: Adds a new user to the system.
method: POST
url: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users
body:
content: |-
{
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Doe",
"email": "[email protected]"
}
headers:
- name: Content-Type
value: application/json
- name: Some-Header
value: Some value
enabled: false
params:
- name: sendWelcomeEmail
value: 'true'To open a collection (a directory containing requests), use the --collection option:
posting --collection path/to/collectionThis will recursively find and display requests in the sidebar.
If you don't supply a directory, Posting will use the default collection directory.
You can check where this is by running posting locate collection.
- To create a new request, press ctrl+n.
- To save changes to the currently open request, press ctrl+s.
Posting can be navigated using either mouse or keyboard.
Jump mode is the fastest way to get around in Posting.
Press ctrl+o to enter jump mode.
A key overlay will appear on the screen, allowing you to jump to any widget by pressing the corresponding key.
tab and shift+tab will move focus between widgets, and j/k/up/down will move around within a widget.
Where it makes sense, up and down will move between widgets.
Important keyboard shortcuts are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
However, there are many other shortcuts available - these will be documented soon.
Press ctrl+m to expand the section which currently has focus (the request or response section).
Press it again to reset the UI.
This can also be done via the command palette options view: expand request and view: expand response.
You can refer to variables in the UI using the ${env:VARIABLE_NAME} or $env:VARIABLE_NAME syntax.
These variables will be substituted into outgoing requests.
Used in conjunction with dotenv (.env) files, this lets you define environment-specific variables.
You can load .env files into Posting from the command line using the --env option, and then refer to variables in these files within the UI.
Imagine you're testing an API which exists in both dev and prod environments.
In the dev and prod environments, some variables are shared, but others are different. We can model this by having a single shared.env file which contains variables which are shared between environments, and then a dev.env and prod.env file which contain environment specific variables.
# file: shared.env
API_PATH="/api/v1"
ENV_NAME="shared"
# file: dev.env
API_KEY="dev-api-key"
ENV_NAME="dev"
BASE_URL="https://${ENV_NAME}.example.com"
# file: prod.env
API_KEY="prod-api-key"
ENV_NAME="prod"
BASE_URL="https://${ENV_NAME}.example.com"When working in the dev environment, you can then load all of the shared variables and all of the development environment specific variables using the --env option:
posting --env shared.env --env dev.envThis will load all of the shared variables, and then load the dev.env file. Since ENV_NAME appears in both files, the value from the dev.env file will be used since that was the last one specified.
Note that you do not need to restart to load changes made to these files, so you can open and edit your env files in an editor of your choice alongside Posting.
If you want to permit using environment variables that exist on the host machine (i.e. those which are not defined in any .env files), you must set the use_host_environment config option to true (or set the environmnet variable POSTING_USE_HOST_ENVIRONMENT=true).
Since all Posting configuration options can also be specified as environment variables, we can put environment specific config inside .env files. There's a dedicated "Configuration" section in this document which covers this in more detail.
For example, if you wanted to use a light theme in the prod environment (as a subtle reminder that you're in production!), you could set the environment variable POSTING_THEME=solarized-light inside the prod.env file.
Note that configuration files take precedence over environment variables, so if you set a value in both a .env file and a config.yaml, the value from the config.yaml file will be used.
Some functionality in Posting doesn't warrant a dedicated keyboard shortcut (for example, switching to a specific theme), and can instead be accessed via the command palette.
To open the command palette, press ctrl+p.
Posting can be configured using a configuration file, environment variables, and/or .env files.
Configuration values are loaded in the following order of precedence (highest to lowest):
- Configuration file
- Environment variables
.envfiles
The range of available configuration will be greatly expanded in the future.
You can write configuration for Posting using YAML.
The location of the config file can be checked using the command posting locate config.
Here's an example configuration file:
theme: galaxy
layout: horizontal
response:
prettify_json: false
heading:
visible: true
show_host: falseAll configuration values can also be set as environment variables.
Simply prefix the name of the config with POSTING_ and set it as an environment variable.
For nested configuration values, use __ as the delimiter. So to set heading.visible to false, you can set the environment variable POSTING_HEADING__VISIBLE=false.
For example, to set the theme to galaxy, you can set the environment variable POSTING_THEME=galaxy.
Posting also supports .env (dotenv) files, which are useful if you want to keep your configuration in a file rather than in your shell's environment variables.
You can tell Posting to use a .env file using the --env-file option.
Here's an example .env file:
POSTING_THEME="cobalt"
POSTING_LAYOUT="vertical"
POSTING_HEADING__VISIBLE="false"| Config Key (Env Var) | Values (Default) | Description |
|---|---|---|
theme (POSTING_THEME) |
"posting", "galaxy", "monokai", "solarized-light", "nautilus", "nebula", "alpine", "cobalt", "twilight", "hacker" (Default: "posting") |
Sets the theme of the application. |
layout (POSTING_LAYOUT) |
"vertical", "horizontal" (Default: "horizontal") |
Sets the layout of the application. |
use_host_environment (POSTING_USE_HOST_ENVIRONMENT) |
true, false (Default: false) |
Allow/deny using environment variables from the host machine in requests via $env: syntax. When disabled, only variables defined explicitly in .env files will be available for use. |
animation (POSTING_ANIMATION) |
"none", "basic", "full" (Default: "none") |
Controls the animation level. |
response.prettify_json (POSTING_RESPONSE__PRETTIFY_JSON) |
true, false (Default: true) |
If enabled, JSON responses will be pretty-formatted. |
heading.visible (POSTING_HEADING__VISIBLE) |
true, false (Default: true) |
Show/hide the app header. |
heading.show_host (POSTING_HEADING__SHOW_HOST) |
true, false (Default: true) |
Show/hide the hostname in the app header. |
