HTTP and REST

The most common request type: anything that speaks HTTP, starting with REST APIs.

Right-click in the tree ▸ Add ▸ HTTP request.

Methods

GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS and QUERY.

The URL

The URL accepts {{variables}} anywhere — scheme, host, port, path, query string. The resolved value is shown under the field.

Three lists complete the URL:

• query parameters (?key=value);
• path parameters, which replace the path’s named segments;
• headers.

Every row has an enable tickbox, a value type and a description.

The body

Four families:

Type	Use
Text	JSON, XML, plain text — with syntax highlighting and reformatting
File	Sends the contents of a file from disk
Form (multipart/form-data)	Named fields, with files
x-www-form-urlencoded	Named fields encoded in the body

Options

• Timeout: in milliseconds, specific to this request; failing that, the global value applies.
• Follow redirects: enabled by default. Turn it off to observe the 3xx itself and its Location header.

The response

Status, time, size, headers, and the body rendered according to its content type: collapsible JSON viewer, indented XML, image preview, plain text. The history tab gives you access to previous runs.

Authentication

Attach an authentication route to the request so that the headers are injected and the token renewed automatically. See Authentication.

Server mode

Restorm can also host an HTTP server, to test how a client consumes it — typically your application’s code, which you point at localhost for the duration of a test.

Add one with Add ▸ HTTP server: it listens on localhost:<port><path> for a method + path pair and replies with the status, headers and body you configure there. Other protocols are hosted the same way — see Server mode and Mocking an HTTP API.

Code snippets

Twenty-four languages and libraries are offered in the Code Snippets tab: cURL, JavaScript (Fetch, Axios), TypeScript, Python (Requests, http.client, aiohttp), native Node.js, Go, Rust (reqwest), Java (HttpClient, OkHttp), C# (HttpClient), PHP (cURL, Guzzle), Ruby (Net::HTTP, Faraday), Swift (URLSession), Kotlin (OkHttp), Dart, R (httr), PowerShell, Elixir (HTTPoison), Clojure (clj-http).

Import rather than type

Do you have an OpenAPI specification, a Postman collection, a HAR file or just a curl command? File ▸ Import rebuilds the tree for you. See Import & export.