Bloop

Bloops things! A postman alternative that uses TOML as a configuration file. It automatically detects used variables and performs actions needed to satisfy them, such as reading from a file, making another request and pulling out values, or running an arbitrary script.

Bloops runs on MacOs, Linux, and Windows.

Usage

Bloop can be used either as a cli or as a terminal gui.

Requests

Named http requests to make

[request.florp]
uri = "http://localhost:5284/echo"
method = "POST"
body = "{}"
content_type = "application/json"
headers = { Authorization = "Bearer ${mySuperSecretToken}" }

[request.somejson]
uri = "https://stackoverflow.com/api/recent-chat"

Properties

uri

• can contain variables
• default is http://localhost

method

• default is GET

body

• can contain variables
• optional request body

content_type

• optional content type
• only used if body is set

form

• values can contain variables
• optional key value pairs to be used in application/x-www-form-urlencoded content
• if set body will not be used

headers

• values can contain variables
• optional key value pairs to be sent as headers

query

• values can contain variables
• optional key value pairs to be added to the uri as query parameters

Variables

Variables can be used in request header values, bodies, and the uri by using ${someVariableName} inside of the definition. Values come from various sources defined in the properties or passed to the cli with --var someKey=value,otherKey=derp

[variable.activeUsers]
source = "somejson"
jpath = "$.activeUsers"

[variable.command]
command = "./scripts/testVariableScript.ps1"

Properties

value

• constant literal value for a variable

jpath

• a jpath used to extract values from the reponse of source
• source is required if this is set

source

• the request name that will be used to extract values
• jpath is required if this is set

command

• executable or script to run
• the entire stdout is used as the variable value if the command exits successfully

command_args

• optional arguments to pass to a command

file

• read the contents of a file

env

• environment variables

value_lifetime

• optional timespan after which a new value will be retrieved. In the format HH:MM:SS Useful for token expiration.

Variable Sets

Sometimes you want to have swappable sets of variables, for example when interacting with multiple deployment environments. To support this bloop variables support environment sets. Each variable in a variable set has all the properties of a normal top level variable. The -s or --set cli option can be used to select an env set.

[request.someApi]
uri = "https://${host}/floob"
headers = { Authorization = "Bearer ${token}" }

[variable.host]
default = "dev.example.com"

[variableset.host.staging]
env = "STAGE_HOST"

[variableset.host.prod]
file = ".prod_host"

[variable.token]
file = ".token"

[variableset.token.staging]
command = "./getToken.ps1"
command_args = "stage"
value_lifetime = "00:10:00"

[variableset.token.prod]
command = "./getToken.ps1"
command_args = "prod"
value_lifetime = "00:03:00"

bloop someApi --set prod

Default values

[defaults]
headers = { X-Bloop = "${yep}" }

Header values that will be added to every request if not already specified

Dev and Build

Bloop requires the latest .net for the main application, and powershell for scripts and tests

To build: dotnet build

To produce release mode outputs in the ./releases/ directory: ./scripts/buildCli.ps1

To run integration tests: ./tests/IntegrationTests/runTests.ps1