Table of Contents

• What's Hurl?
• Also an HTTP Test Tool
• Powered by curl
• Why Hurl?
• Documentation
• Samples
  • Getting Data
    • Query Params
  • Sending Data
    • Sending HTML Form Datas
    • Sending Multipart Form Datas
    • Posting a JSON Body
    • Templating a JSON/XML Body
  • Testing Response
    • Testing Response Headers
    • Testing REST Apis
    • Testing HTML Response
    • Testing Set-Cookie Attributes
  • Others
    • Testing Endpoint Performance
    • Using SOAP Apis
    • Capturing and Using a CSRF Token
• Building
  • Linux, macOS
  • Windows
• Feedbacks

What's Hurl?

Hurl is a command line tool that performs HTTP requests defined in a simple plain text format.

It can perform requests, capture values and evaluate queries on headers and body response. Hurl is very versatile: it can be used for both fetching data and testing HTTP sessions.

# Get home:
GET https://example.net

HTTP/1.1 200
[Captures]
csrf_token: xpath "string(//meta[@name='_csrf_token']/@content)"

# Do login!
POST https://example.net/login?user=toto&password=1234
X-CSRF-TOKEN: {{csrf_token}}

HTTP/1.1 302

Chaining multiple requests is easy:

GET https://api.example.net/health
GET https://api.example.net/step1
GET https://api.example.net/step2
GET https://api.example.net/step3

Also an HTTP Test Tool

Hurl can run HTTP requests but can also be used to test HTTP responses. Different type of queries and predicates are supported, from XPath and JSONPath on body response, to assert on status code and response headers.

GET https://example.net

HTTP/1.1 200
[Asserts]
xpath "normalize-space(//head/title)" equals "Hello world!"

It is well adapted for REST/json apis

POST https://api.example.net/tests
{
    "id": "456",
    "evaluate": true
}

HTTP/1.1 200
[Asserts]
jsonpath "$.status" equals "RUNNING"      # Check the status code
jsonpath "$.tests" countEquals 25         # Check the number of items

and even SOAP apis

POST https://example.net/InStock
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
SOAPAction: "http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:m="http://www.example.org">
  <soap:Header></soap:Header>
  <soap:Body>
    <m:GetStockPrice>
      <m:StockName>GOOG</m:StockName>
    </m:GetStockPrice>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

HTTP/1.1 200

Hurl can also be used to test HTTP endpoints performances:

GET http://api.example.org/v1/pets

HTTP/1.0 200
[Asserts]
duration lessThan 1000  # Duration in ms

Powered by curl

Hurl is a lightweight binary written in Rust. Under the hood, Hurl HTTP engine is powered by libcurl, one of the most powerful and reliable file transfer library. With its text file format, Hurl adds syntactic sugar to run and tests HTTP requests, but it's still the curl that we love.

Why Hurl?

• Text format for both devops and developers
• Fast command-line for both local dev and continuous integration
• Single binary, easy to install, with no runtime required

Documentation

Visit the Hurl web site to find out how to install and use Hurl. Precompiled binaries for Linux and macOS (Windows really soon!) are also available in the GitHub releases section.

• Installation
• Samples
• File Format

Samples

To run a sample, you can edit a file with the sample content, and use Hurl:

$ vi sample.hurl

GET https://example.net

$ hurl sample.hurl

Getting Data

A simple GET:

GET https://example.net

Doc

A simple GET with headers:

GET https://example.net/news
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Connection: keep-alive

Doc

Query Params

GET https://example.net/news
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0
[QueryStringParams]
order: newest
search: something to search
count: 100

Or:

GET https://example.net/news?order=newest&search=something%20to%20search&count=100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0

Doc

Sending Data

Sending HTML Form Datas

POST https://example.net/contact
[FormParams]
default: false
token: {{token}}
email: john.doe@rookie.org
number: 33611223344

Doc

Sending Multipart Form Datas

POST https://example.net/upload
[MultipartFormData]
field1: value1
field2: file,example.txt;
# On can specify the file content type:
field3: file,example.zip; application/zip

Doc

Posting a JSON Body

With an inline JSON:

POST https://api.example.net/tests
{
    "id": "456",
    "evaluate": true
}

Doc

With a local file:

POST https://api.example.net/tests
Content-Type: application/json
file,data.json;

Doc

Templating a JSON/XML Body

Using templates with JSON body or XML body is not currently supported in Hurl. Besides, you can use templates in raw string body with variables to send a JSON or XML body:

PUT https://api.example.net/hits
Content-Type: application/json
```
{
    "key0": "{{a_string}}",
    "key1": {{a_bool}},
    "key2": {{a_null}},
    "key3": {{a_number}}
}
```

Variables can be initialized via command line:

$ hurl --variable key0=apple --variable key1=true --variable key2=null --variable key3=42 test.hurl

Resulting in a PUT request with the following JSON body:

{
    "key0": "apple",
    "key1": true,
    "key2": null,
    "key3": 42
}

Doc

Testing Response

Testing Response Headers

Use implicit response asserts to test header values:

GET http://www.example.org/index.html

HTTP/1.0 200
Set-Cookie: theme=light
Set-Cookie: sessionToken=abc123; Expires=Wed, 09 Jun 2021 10:18:14 GMT

Doc

Or use explicit response asserts with predicates:

GET https://example.net

HTTP/1.1 302
[Asserts]
header "Location" contains "www.example.net"

Doc

Testing REST Apis

Asserting JSON body response with JSONPath:

GET https//example.org/order
screencapability: low

HTTP/1.1 200
[Asserts]
jsonpath "$.validated" equals true
jsonpath "$.userInfo.firstName" equals "Franck"
jsonpath "$.userInfo.lastName" equals "Herbert"
jsonpath "$.hasDevice" equals false
jsonpath "$.links" countEquals 12
jsonpath "$.state" not equals null

Doc

Testing status code:

GET https//example.org/order/435

HTTP/1.1 200

Doc

GET https//example.org/order/435

# Testing status code is in a 200-300 range
HTTP/1.1 *
[Asserts]
status greaterThanOrEquals 200
status lessThan 300

Doc

Testing HTML Response

GET https://example.com

HTTP/1.1 200
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

[Asserts]
xpath "string(/html/head/title)" contains "Example" # Check title
xpath "count(//p)" equals 2                         # Check the number of p
xpath "//p" countEquals 2                           # Similar assert for p
xpath "boolean(count(//h2))" equals false           # Check there is no h2
xpath "//h2" not exists                             # Similar assert for h2

Doc

Testing Set-Cookie Attributes

GET http://myserver.com/home

HTTP/1.0 200
[Asserts]
cookie "JSESSIONID" equals "8400BAFE2F66443613DC38AE3D9D6239"
cookie "JSESSIONID[Value]" equals "8400BAFE2F66443613DC38AE3D9D6239"
cookie "JSESSIONID[Expires]" contains "Wed, 13 Jan 2021"
cookie "JSESSIONID[Secure]" exists
cookie "JSESSIONID[HttpOnly]" exists
cookie "JSESSIONID[SameSite]" equals "Lax"

Doc

Others

Testing Endpoint Performance

GET https://sample.org/helloworld

HTTP/* *
[Asserts]
duration lessThan 1000   # Check that response time is less than one second

Doc

Using SOAP Apis

POST https://example.net/InStock
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
SOAPAction: "http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:m="http://www.example.org">
  <soap:Header></soap:Header>
  <soap:Body>
    <m:GetStockPrice>
      <m:StockName>GOOG</m:StockName>
    </m:GetStockPrice>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

HTTP/1.1 200

Doc

Capturing and Using a CSRF Token

GET https://example.net

HTTP/* 200
[Captures]
csrf_token: xpath "string(//meta[@name='_csrf_token']/@content)"

POST https://example.net/login?user=toto&password=1234
X-CSRF-TOKEN: {{csrf_token}}

HTTP/* 302

Doc

Building

Linux, macOS

Hurl depends on libssl, libcurl and libxml2 native libraries. You will need their development files in your platform.

# debian based distributions
apt install -y pkg-config libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev

# redhat based distributions
yum install -y pkg-config gcc openssl-devel libxml2-devel

# arch based distributions
pacman -Sy --noconfirm pkgconf gcc openssl libxml2

# osx
brew install pkg-config gcc openssl libxml2

Hurl is written in Rust. You should install the latest stable release.

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh -s -- -y
source $HOME/.cargo/env
rustc --version
cargo --version

Build

git clone https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl
cd hurl
cargo build --release
./target/release/hurl --version

Install Binary

cargo install --path packages/hurl

Windows

please follow the contrib/windows section

Feedbacks

Hurl is still in beta, any feedback, suggestion, bugs or improvements are welcome.

POST https://hurl.dev/api/feedback
{
    "name": "John Doe",
    "feedback": "Hurl is awesome !"
}
HTTP/1.1 200