Httpie CLI

HTTPie

Human-friendly HTTP client for the terminal. Simpler than curl with automatic JSON, syntax highlighting, and sensible defaults.

• Official repo: https://github.com/httpie/cli
• Docs: https://httpie.io/docs/cli

Common Commands

GET Requests

http GET https://api.example.com/users
https api.example.com/users                  # https shorthand
http api.example.com/users                   # http shorthand
http api.example.com/users?page=2            # Query params
http api.example.com/users page==2 limit==10 # Query params (cleaner)

POST Requests

http POST api.example.com/users name=John email=john@test.com   # JSON body
http POST api.example.com/users name=John age:=30               # := for non-string
http POST api.example.com/users tags:='["a","b"]'               # := for arrays/objects
http --form POST api.example.com/upload file@./photo.jpg        # Form data / file upload

PUT / PATCH / DELETE

http PUT api.example.com/users/1 name=Jane
http PATCH api.example.com/users/1 status=active
http DELETE api.example.com/users/1

Headers and Auth

http api.example.com/users Authorization:"Bearer TOKEN"
http api.example.com/users X-Custom-Header:value
http -a user:pass api.example.com/users      # Basic auth
http --auth-type bearer --auth TOKEN api.example.com/users  # Bearer auth

Output Control

http api.example.com/users --print=b         # Body only
http api.example.com/users --print=h         # Headers only
http api.example.com/users --print=hb        # Headers + body
http -b api.example.com/users                # Body only shorthand
http -h api.example.com/users                # Headers only shorthand
http --json api.example.com/users            # Force JSON
http --download api.example.com/file.zip     # Download file

Sessions

http --session=mysession api.example.com/login user=admin pass=secret
http --session=mysession api.example.com/protected   # Reuses cookies/auth

Agent Best Practices

• Use -b (body only) for clean output when piping to jq
• Use --print=b for scripts, default output includes headers
• Use := for non-string JSON values (numbers, booleans, arrays)
• Use --session for APIs that require login cookies
• Use --check-status to exit with error on 4xx/5xx responses
• Pipe to jq for further processing: http -b api.example.com/users | jq '.data'
• Use --offline to preview requests without sending them

Example Workflows

Test an API endpoint

http -b GET api.example.com/health | jq '.status'

Create a resource with JSON body

http POST api.example.com/posts \
  title="My Post" \
  body="Content here" \
  published:=true \
  tags:='["dev","cli"]'