plz-see.el

plz-see is an interactive HTTP client for Emacs based on the plz library. It is interactive in the sense that request responses are pretty-printed in a pop-up buffer. It can be used to explore and test web APIs or to debug packages that use plz.

The main function provided by the package is unsurprisingly named plz-see, which has the essentially the same API as plz. See the docstring for details on the differences.

Additionally, the following variables (which become buffer-local when set) are provided for convenience:

• plz-see-base-url: Prefix added to the all “relative” URLs passed to plz-see. Paradoxically, a URL in considered relative if it starts with /
• plz-see-base-headers: Alist of headers added to all requests. Entries of this list can be overridden using the HEADERS argument of plz-see.

For further customization options, see M-x customize-group plz-see RET.

Examples

Make a GET request:

(plz-see 'get "https://httpbin.org/get?hello=world")

Send some data through a POST request:

(plz-see 'post "https://httpbin.org/post" :body "Hello World!")
(plz-see 'post "https://httpbin.org/post" :body (current-buffer))
(plz-see 'post "https://httpbin.org/post" :body '(file "./README.org"))

Set a base URL to shorten plz-see calls in a given buffer:

(setq-local plz-see-base-url "https://httpbin.org")
(plz-see 'get "/image/jpeg")
(plz-see 'get "/status/404")

Authenticate with username and password, read a bearer token from the server response, and store it in the default headers for future use.

(progn
  (setq-local plz-see-base-url "http://localhost:8080")
  (setq-local user "user@example.com" pass "1234"))

(plz-see 'post "/login"
         :headers '(("Content-Type" . "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"))
         :body (format "username=%s&password=%s"
                       (url-hexify-string user)
                       (url-hexify-string pass))
         :as 'json-read
         :then (let ((buffer (current-buffer)))
                 (lambda (r)
                   (with-current-buffer buffer
                     (let ((token (alist-get 'access_token r)))
                       (setq-local plz-see-base-headers
                                   `(("Authorization" . ,(concat "Bearer " token)))))))))

(plz-see 'get "/authenticated")  ; Yay!

Alternatives

There are several alternatives to this package, such as restclient and verb. They are certainly more fully featured than plz-see and arguably have a more user-friendly notation.

plz-see is geared towards those who prefer writing Elisp. It can also be called from Eshell or IELM.