Firefox Add-on RESTclient - How to input POST parameters? - rest

I've installed Firefox RESTclient add-on but , I'm having hard time figuring out how to pass POST parameters. Is there a specific format to do this? Or is there any other tool which can be used to debug an REST API on Mac OS X ?

If you want to submit a POST request
You have to set the “request header” section of the Firefox plugin to have a “name” = “Content-Type” and “value” = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”
Now, you are able to submit parameter like “name=mynamehere&title=TA” in the “request body” text area field

Here is a step by step guide (I think this should come pre-loaded with the add-on):
In the top menu of RESTClient -> Headers -> Custom Header
In the pop-up box, enter Name: Content-Type and Value: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Check the "Save to favorite" box and click Okay.
Now you will see a "Headers" section with your newly added data.
Then in the Body section, you can enter your data to post like:
username=test&name=Firstname+Lastname
Whenever you want to make a post request, from the Headers main menu, select the Content-Type:application/x-www-form-urlencoded item that you added and it should work.

You can send the parameters in the URL of the POST request itself.
Example URL:
localhost:8080/abc/getDetails?paramter1=value1&parameter2=value2
Once you copy such type of URL in Firefox REST client make a POST call to the server you want

Request header needs to be set as per below image.
request body can be passed as json string in text area.

I tried the methods mentioned in some other answers, but they look like workarounds to me. Using Firefox Add-on RESTclient to send HTTP POST requests with parameters is not straightforward in my opinion, at least for the version I'm currently using, 2.0.1.
Instead, try using other free open source tools, such as Apache JMeter. It is simple and straightforward (see the screenshot as below)

Related

Copy as cURL(cmd) adds invalid characters to form data

I want to use Postman to test server side validation so I used the browser to submit (valid) data to the server and in the network tab of Chromes developer tools used "Copy as cURL". Then, in Postman, Import->Paste Raw Text -> Import.
If I look at the request body the data appears on x-www-form-urlencoded tab and every value has a '^' character appended to it. e.g. JobId: 75051^
When I post it the server validation picks it up as invalid data e.g.
The value "75051^" is not valid for JobId
Edit
If I use "Copy as C=cURL(bash)" instead, the ^ characters are removed but the server doesn't like the encoding used on dates and times. e.g. T
The value '11%2F19%2F2018+12%3A15+AM' is not valid for Work Start Time
What is going on here? Can I get "Copy as cURL" to pick up my data correctly, or is there a better way to pick up the request and get it into Postman?
I found a better way to pick up the request and get it into Postman:
Install the Postman Chrome App instead of the desktop
app.
Install the Postman Interceptor Extension.
Open Postman and click on the Interceptor icon in the toolbar to switch the
toggle to “on”.
Browse to your website: the requests appear in Postman's history.
Go to Interceptor missing from native apps #1667 and vote for it
Reference:
Postman Interceptor Extension Documentation

REST API Testing: How to get response using Google Chrome developer tools?

I'm very new to API testing.
I'm trying to make use of Google Chrome's developer tools to understand and explore this subject.
Question 1:
Is it possible to get the response (possibly in JSON format) of a simple GET request using chrome developer tools?
What I'm currently doing is:
Open chrome developer tools
Go to Network tab
Clear existing logs
Send a post request simply by hitting a URL. e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask
Check the corresponding docs loaded
Question 2:
What are the relevance "Reponse Headers" shown on the image above? I mean, am I correct to think that this is the response I am getting after doing the GET request?
Any help or references you can give are much appreciated!
If you want to test a rest api I sugest you get postman which is meant for that purpose.
Going to your questions:
Question 1: Is it possible to get the response (possibly in JSON
format) of a simple GET request using chrome developer tools?
The first point to make clear is that it is the server who will or will not send a json response to the browser. Not the browser who can choose to see any response as json.
If you send a GET request that the server responds with a json object or json array and the Content-type header is set to application/json, you will see that response already formated in the main window of the browser.
If the Content-type is set to text/html, for example, then you will still get the a json text as response in the main window but it won't be nicely formated. Depending on how the response was sent, sometimes you can see it nicely formatted by left clicking the browser window and selecting view source page.
For this you don't need developer's tools unless you want to see how long did it take to receive the response, or check the headers for some specific value, etc, but nothing to do with receiving the response or rendering it on screen.
Developer's tools is more usefull if you are working with javascript/jquery and/or if you are sending ajax requests (GET or POST). In these cases you can debug the function and also see the ajax request to check what actually went out from your browser and what was received as a response.
Question 2: What are the relevance "Reponse Headers" shown on the
image above? I mean, am I correct to think that this is the response I
am getting after doing the GET request?
In the response you get the two things, the headers, and the content. The json objects you see are part of the content not the headers.
The headers will tell the browser, for example, that the body is json (vs. an html documenet or something different), besides of other information like cache-control, or how long the body is.
Search for http headers for more information on which are teh standard headers.
To answer your questions narrowly:
Is it possible to get the response (possibly in JSON format) of a simple GET request using chrome developer tools?
Yes! Just click the Response tab, which is to the right of the Headers tab that's open in your screenshot.
What are the relevance "Reponse Headers" shown on the image above? I mean, am I correct to think that this is the response I am getting after doing the GET request?
Yes, these are the HTTP headers that were sent with the response to your request.
The broader question here is "how do I test a REST API?" DevTools is good for manual testing, but there are automated tools that can make it more efficient. I'll leave that up to you to learn more about that broad topic.

How to test REST API using Chrome's extension "Advanced Rest Client"

Following the instructions at the link below, I successfully built a REST API for my Django application: http://django-rest-framework.org/tutorial/quickstart.
I can test it by doing the following from the Unix prompt:
curl -H 'Accept: application/json; indent=4' -u root:myPassword http://www.myWebsite.com/users/
It works :)
However, I would like to use the Chrome extension Advanced Rest Client to test this same functionality.
I have installed the extension, but I don't know where/how to put the fields. When I make my educated-guess (as you can see in the screenshot), it rejects it saying "Authentication credentials were not provided"
How/where should I specify my parameters to the REST API?
The discoverability is dismal, but it's quite clever how Advanced Rest Client handles basic authentication. The shortcut abraham mentioned didn't work for me, but a little poking around revealed how it does it.
The first thing you need to do is add the Authorization header:
Then, a nifty little thing pops up when you focus the value input (note the "construct" box in the lower right):
Clicking it will bring up a box. It even does OAuth, if you want!
Tada! If you leave the value field blank when you click "construct," it will add the Basic part to it (I assume it will also add the necessary OAuth stuff, too, but I didn't try that, as my current needs were for basic authentication), so you don't need to do anything.
From the screenshot I can see that you want to pass "user" and "password" values to the service. You have send the parameter values in the request header part which is wrong.
The values are sent in the request body and not in the request header.
Also your syntax is wrong.
Correct syntax is: {"user":"user_val","password":"password_val"}.
Also check what is the the content type. It should match with the content type you have set to your service.
This seems a very old question, but I am providing an answer, so that it might help others.
You can specify the variables in the second screen in the form section, as shown below or in the
RAW format by appending the variables as shown in the second image.
If your variable and variable values are valid, you should see a successful response in the response section.
The shortcut format generally used for basic auth is http://username:password#example.com/path. You will also want to include the accept header in the request.
in the header section you have to write
Authorization: Basic aG9sY67890vbGNpbQ==
where string after basic is the 64bit encoding value of your username:password.
php example of getting the header values is:
echo "Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode("myUser:myPassword");
n.b: I assumed your authentication method as basic. which can be different as well.
Add authorization header and click pencil button to enter username and passwords
The easy way to get over of this authentication issue is by stealing authentication token using Fiddler.
Steps
Fire up fiddler and browser.
Navigate browser to open the web application (web site) and do the
required authentication.
Open Fiddler and click on HTTP 200 HTML page request.
On the right pane, from request headers, copy cookie header
parameter value.
Open REST Client and click on "Header form" tab and provide the
cookie value from the clip board.
Click on SEND button and it shall fetch results.
With latest ARC for GET request with authentication need to add
a raw header named Authorization:authtoken.
Please find the screen shot Get request with authentication and query params
To add Query param click on drop down arrow on left side of URL box.

Is it possible to change/modify properties of a CR using OSLC_CM?

Is it possible to modify a property of a change request by using the OSLC-CM REST API of a change management system. The system that I'm trying to achieve that is Rational Change.
I can browse and query via the REST API, but to modify anything I need to resort to command line which is rather slow.
Is there a way?
BR,
Pawel
To update resources using the OSLC-CM REST API you simply just can use HTTP PUT. In order to do this, you'll first need the URL of the Change Request.
The steps to achieve this (using any HTTP client) are:
acquire URL for Change Request (usually done by query, or stored reference, etc)
Perform an HTTP GET on that URL, specifying a format for use in editing. This is done using 'Accept' header, some typical values would be 'application/xml', 'application/json' or 'application/rdf+xml'.
Note, it is a good idea to set the header 'OSLC-Core-Verson: 2.0' as well to ensure you are working with the 2.0 formats.
Once you have fetched the resource, modify the property to the value you want.
Using HTTP PUT, send the modified resource in the content body to the same URL you fetched the resource from.
Additionally you will most likely need to pass along some additional headers to help the server detect any possible conflict.
You should get back a 200 (OK) or 204 (No content) response on success.
An optimization would be to do the same steps as above but only request the properties of interest and only send them by using the selective properties feature of OSLC.
So I've finally got it working with some help from googlegroups
To recap what I've done so that someone else might benefit too (I really have searched for it and the IBM documentation is as in most of the cases not helping):
So to modify PR/CR' implement_actual_effort attribute on the Rational Change server the following procedure was successful (using Firefox REST plugin):
1. In Headers set: Accept to application/xml, Content-Type to application/xml
Put the oslc address of the cr i URL in my case it was:
http://[IP:PORT]/change/oslc/db/[DB hex ID]/role/User/cr/[web_encoded_name_of_the_CR]?oslc_cm.properties=change:implement_actual_effort
(note in browser http://[IP:PORT]/change/oslc/db/[DB hex ID]/role/User/cr/[web_encoded_name_of_the_CR] will open change page of the CR/PR)
In REST client set Method to GET and press SEND
Click on the Response Body (RAW), copy xml Body
Change Method to PUT, change the value of the attribute (in the xml in Body window)
Press SEND
Attribute should have been changed right now, and the response should be similiar to what you've sent, with the attribute showing the change.
Note that to change an attribute (called property from oslc point of view) one has to provide ?oslc_cm.properties=[properties delimited with comma]
and in the request body xml the same properties have to be present, if I remember correctly if the property isn't mentioned in the xml it will be set to default
I hope this helps someone
BR,
Pawel

soapUI: multipart/form-data REST request with file attachments

I am using soapUI for testing a REST web service. Is there a way to attach a file with the other parameters in a multipart request? I see the attachment tab in the panel but I cannot give that attachment a parameter name so that server can identify. It's not helping.
I found it but forgot to post it here. It was not so intuitive.
In your REST Request if you can see an attachment tab, open it and add and attachment with + button. The Name of that file would show full path. e.g. C:\temp\my-file.csv
In you parameters tab, add a parameter and give it a name. The value of that parameter will be file:C:\temp\my-file.csv
In SoapUI 5.x and greater, you must select the "Post QueryString" checkbox. Without this, the file will not be send along with the request.
That should be it. When attaching a file if you select Yes when it asks to Cache the file, you won't have to specify full path in step 2 above. The value of file parameter should be file:my-file.csv
select mediatype as application/json and then add the json string to that. It will go to server as payload. Usually this request is of POST or PUT type