xh

xh is a friendly and fast tool for sending HTTP requests. It reimplements as much as possible of HTTPie's excellent design.

Installation

On macOS and Linux via Homebrew

brew install xh

On windows via Scoop

scoop install xh

On Arch linux via Pacman

pacman -S xh

From binaries

The release page contains prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows.

From source

Make sure that you have Rust 1.45 or later installed.

cargo install xh

Usage

USAGE:
    xh [OPTIONS] <[METHOD] URL> [--] [REQUEST_ITEM]...

OPTIONS:
    -j, --json                       (default) Serialize data items from the command line as a JSON object
    -f, --form                       Serialize data items from the command line as form fields
    -m, --multipart                  Like --form, but force a multipart/form-data request even without files
        --pretty <STYLE>             Controls output processing [possible values: all, colors, format, none]
    -s, --style <THEME>              Output coloring style [possible values: auto, solarized]
    -p, --print <FORMAT>             String specifying what the output should contain
    -h, --headers                    Print only the response headers, shortcut for --print=h
    -b, --body                       Print only the response body, Shortcut for --print=b
    -v, --verbose                    Print the whole request as well as the response
    -q, --quiet                      Do not print to stdout or stderr
    -S, --stream                     Always stream the response body
    -o, --output <FILE>              Save output to FILE instead of stdout
    -d, --download                   Download the body to a file instead of printing it
    -c, --continue                   Resume an interrupted download. Requires --download and --output
    -a, --auth <USER[:PASS]>         Authenticate as USER with PASS. PASS will be prompted if missing
        --bearer <TOKEN>             Authenticate with a bearer token
        --ignore-netrc               Do not use credentials from .netrc
        --offline                    Construct HTTP requests without sending them anywhere
        --check-status               Exit with an error status code if the server replies with an error
    -F, --follow                     Do follow redirects
        --max-redirects <NUM>        Number of redirects to follow, only respected if `follow` is set
        --proxy <PROTOCOL:URL>...    Use a proxy for a protocol. For example: `--proxy https:http://proxy.host:8080`
        --verify <VERIFY>            If "no", skip SSL verification. If a file path, use it as a CA bundle
        --cert <FILE>                Use a client side certificate for SSL
        --cert-key <FILE>            A private key file to use with --cert
        --https                      Make HTTPS requests if not specified in the URL
    -I, --ignore-stdin               Do not attempt to read stdin
        --curl                       Print a translation to a `curl` command
        --curl-long                  Use the long versions of curl's flags
        --help                       Prints help information
    -V, --version                    Prints version information

ARGS:
    <[METHOD] URL>       The request URL, preceded by an optional HTTP method
    <REQUEST_ITEM>...    Optional key-value pairs to be included in the request

Each option can be reset with a --no-OPTION argument.

Run xh help for more detailed information.

Request Items

xh uses HTTPie's request-item syntax to set headers, request body, query string, etc.

• =/:= for setting the request body's JSON fields (= for strings and := for other JSON types).
• == for adding query strings.
• @ for including files in multipart requests e.g [email protected] or [email protected];type=image/jpeg.
• : for adding or removing headers e.g connection:keep-alive or connection:.
• ; for including headers with empty values e.g header-without-value;.

xh and xhs

xh will default to HTTPS scheme if the binary name is one of xhs, https, or xhttps. If you have installed xh via a package manager, both xh and xhs should be available by default. Otherwise, you need to create one like this:

$ cd /path/to/xh
$ ln -s ./xh ./xhs

xh httpbin.org/get | jq .url  # "http://httpbin.org/get"
xhs httpbin.org/get | jq .url # "https://httpbin.org/get"

Examples

# Send a GET request
xh httpbin.org/json

# Send a POST request with body {"name": "ahmed", "age": 24}
xh httpbin.org/post name=ahmed age:=24

# Send a GET request with querystring id=5&sort=true
xh get httpbin.org/json id==5 sort==true

# Send a GET request and include a header named x-api-key with value 12345
xh get httpbin.org/json x-api-key:12345

# Send a PUT request and pipe the result to less
xh put httpbin.org/put id:=49 age:=25 | less

# Download and save to res.json
xh -d httpbin.org/json -o res.json

xh vs HTTPie

Advantages over HTTPie

• Improved startup speed. xh may run short requests many times as fast.
• Available as a single statically linked binary that's easy to install and carry around.
• HTTP/2 support.
• Builtin translation to curl commands with the --curl flag (similar to https://curl2httpie.online/).
• Short, cheatsheet-style output from --help. (For longer output, pass help.)

Disadvantages

• Not all of HTTPie's features are implemented. (#4)
• HTTP/2 cannot be disabled. (#68)
• Large downloads over HTTP/2 are currently slow. (#49)
• No plugin system.
• General immaturity. HTTPie is old and well-tested.
• Worse documentation.

Other differences

• rustls is used instead of the system's TLS library.
• Headers are sent and printed in lowercase.
• JSON keys are not sorted.

Similar Projects

• https://github.com/rs/curlie
• https://github.com/saghm/rural
• https://github.com/mark-burnett/ht