Description
Adenosine is a tiny script wrapper for curl <http://curl.haxx.se/>. It
provides a simple, concise shell interface for interacting with REST
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer>
services. Since it is just a command you run in your shell and not in
its own separate command environment you have access to all the
powerful shell tools, such as perl, awk, grep, sed, etc. You can use
adenosine in pipelines to process data from REST services, and PUT or
POST the data right back. You can even pipe the data in and then edit
it interactively in your text editor prior to PUT or POST.
Cookies are supported automatically and stored in a file locally. Most
of the arguments are remembered from one call to the next to save
typing. It has pretty good defaults for most purposes. Additionally,
adenosine allows you to easily provide your own options to be passed
directly to curl, so even the most complex requests can be accomplished
with the minimum amount of command line pain.
Here is a nice screencast showing adenosine (née resty) in action
<http://jpmens.net/2010/04/26/resty/> (by Jan-Piet Mens).
Quick Start
From git
Grab the files from github:
$ git clone http://github.com/frioux/app-adenosine-prefab
Source the exports before using it. (You can put this line in your
~/.bashrc file if you want.)
$ . app-adenosine-prefab/adenosine-exports
From CPAN
If you are a Perl user you can install adenosine from CPAN as follows:
$ cpanm App::Adenosine
And then source the function wrappers as follows:
$ eval $(adenosine exports)
Set the REST host to which you will be making your requests (you can do
this whenever you want to change hosts, anytime).
$ adenosine http://127.0.0.1:8080/data
http://127.0.0.1:8080/data*
Make some HTTP requests.
$ GET /blogs.json
[ {"id" : 1, "title" : "first post", "body" : "This is the first post"}, ... ]
$ PUT /blogs/2.json '{"id" : 2, "title" : "updated post", "body" : "This is the new."}'
{"id" : 2, "title" : "updated post", "body" : "This is the new."}
$ DELETE /blogs/2
$ POST /blogs.json '{"title" : "new post", "body" : "This is the new new."}'
{"id" : 204, "title" : "new post", "body" : "This is the new new."}
What's Next?
Check out some of the plugins available for adenosine! Right now
there's just two, Rainbow and Stopwatch. To use them, edit the
bin/adenosine file and uncomment the plugin lines.
Hacking!
Want to add some features? Fork the frioux/app-adenosine repository and
send pull requests!
A Work In Progress
Adenosine was ported to Perl from resty
<https://github.com/micha/resty> due to a number of issues
<https://github.com/micha/resty/issues>. Because adenosine is not a
simple shell function it does not use env vars as much, and so is less
"persistent" than resty when it comes to various settings. I'm
completely willing to fix this by wrapping adenosine with a small shell
function that sets various environment variables, but I'd rather get it
released with a few exciting features resty does not have. With that in
mind, patches are always welcome. Please get in touch if you'd like one
of the currently unsupported resty features to be fixed and I'll
certainly do what I can to get it working. Any part of the doc marked
with !!! is a place to look out for an imcompatibility.
Usage
source adenosine-exports [-W] [remote] # load functions into shell !!!
adenosine [-v] # prints current request URI base !!!
adenosine <remote> [OPTIONS] # sets the base request URI !!!
HEAD [path] [OPTIONS] # HEAD request
OPTIONS [path] [OPTIONS] # OPTIONS request
GET [path] [OPTIONS] # GET request
DELETE [path] [OPTIONS] # DELETE request
PUT [path] [data] [OPTIONS] # PUT request
POST [path] [data] [OPTIONS] # POST request
TRACE [path] [OPTIONS] # TRACE request
PATCH [path] [OPTIONS] # PATCH request
Options:
-Q Don't URL encode the path.
-q <query> Send query string with the path. A '?' is prepended to
<query> and concatenated onto the <path>.
-W Don't write to history file (only when sourcing script). !!!
-V Edit the input data interactively in 'vi'. (PUT and POST
requests only, with data piped to stdin.)
-v Verbose output. When used with the adenosine command itself
this prints the saved curl options along with the current
URI base. Otherwise this is passed to curl for verbose
curl output.
<curl opt> Any curl options will be passed down to curl.
Configuration, Data File Locations
Adenosine creates a few files in either your ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} and
${XDG_DATA_HOME} directory (if your system uses the XDG directory
standard) or in the ~/.resty directory, otherwise.
Using Existing, Pre-v2.1 Configuration Files With v2.1
If you had resty installed before version 2.1 and your system uses the
XDG config directory standard and you want to continue using your
existing configuration files, please make a backup of your ~/.resty
directory and then do:
$ mkdir -p "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/resty" "${XDG_DATA_HOME}/resty"
$ mv ~/.resty/c "${XDG_DATA_HOME}/resty"
$ mv ~/.resty/* "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/resty"
Request URI Base
The request URI base is what the eventual URI to which the requests
will be made is based on. Specifically, it is a URI that may contain
the * character one or more times. The * will be replaced with the path
parameter in the OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE request
as described above.
For example:
$ adenosine 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/data*.json'
http://127.0.0.1:8080/data*.json
and then
$ GET /5
{ "the_response" : true }
would result in a `GET` request to the URI
http://127.0.0.1:8080/data/5.json.
If no * character is specified when setting the base URI, it's just
added onto the end for you automatically.
HTTPS URIs
HTTPS URIs can be used, as well. For example:
$ adenosine 'https://example.com/doit'
https://example.com/doit*
URI Base History
The URI base is saved to an rc file (${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/resty/host or
~/.resty/host) each time it's set, and the last setting is saved in an
environment variable !!! ($_resty_host). The URI base is read from the
rc file when resty starts up, but only if the $_resty_host environment
variable is not set. In this way you can make requests to different
hosts using resty from separate terminals, and have a different URI
base for each terminal.
If you want to see what the current URI base is, just run adenosine
with no arguments. The URI base will be printed to stdout.
The Optional Path Parameter
The HTTP verbs (OPTIONS, HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE) first
argument is always an optional URI path. This path must always start
with a / character. If the path parameter is not provided on the
command line, adenosine will just use the last path it was provided
with. This "last path" is stored in an environment variable
($_resty_path), so each terminal basically has its !!! own "last path".
URL Encoding Of Path Parameter
Adenosine will always URL encode
<http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/topics/urlencoding.htm> the
path, except for slashes. (Slashes in path elements need to be manually
encoded as %2F.) This means that the ?, =, and & characters will be
encoded, as well as some other problematic characters. To disable this
behavior use the -Q option.
Query Strings, POST Parameters, And Both At The Same Time
There are three ways to add a query string to the path. The first,
mentioned above, is to disable URL encoding with the -Q option, and
include the query string with the path parameter, like this:
$ GET '/blogs/47?param=foo&otherparam=bar' -Q
To specify a query string without disabling URL encoding on the path
the -q option is used, like this:
$ GET /blogs/47 -q 'param=foo&otherparam=bar'
Finally, you can use the curl -d and -G options, like this:
$ GET /blogs/47 -d 'param=foo' -d 'otherparam=bar' -G
However, if you want to pass both GET parameters in the query string
and POST parameters in the request body, curl cannot support this by
itself. Using the -q or -Q adenosine options with the -d curl option
will accomplish this, like so:
$ POST '/blogs/47?param=foo&otherparam=bar' -Q -d 'postparam=baz'
POST/PUT Requests and Data
Normally you would probably want to provide the request body data right
on the command line like this:
$ PUT /blogs/5.json '{"title" : "hello", "body" : "this is it"}'
But sometimes you will want to send the request body from a file
instead. To do that you pipe in the contents of the file:
$ PUT /blogs/5.json < /tmp/t # !!!
Or you can pipe the data from another program, like this:
$ myprog | PUT /blogs/5.json # !!!
Or, interestingly, as a filter pipeline with
jsawk|http://github.com/micha/jsawk:
$ GET /blogs/5.json | jsawk 'this.author="Bob Smith";this.tags.push("news")' | PUT
Notice how the path argument is omitted from the PUT command.
Edit PUT/POST Data In Vi
With the -V options you can pipe data into PUT or POST, edit it in vi,
save the data (using :wq in vi, as normal) and the resulting data is
then PUT or POSTed. This is similar to the way visudo works, for
example.
$ GET /blogs/2 | PUT -V
This fetches the data and lets you edit it, and then does a PUT on the
resource. If you don't like vi you can specify your preferred editor by
setting the EDITOR environment variable.
Errors and Output
For successful 2xx responses, the response body is printed on stdout.
You can pipe the output to stuff, process it, and then pipe it back to
adenosine, if you want.
For responses other than 2xx the response body is dumped to stderr.
Passing Command Line Options To Curl
Anything after the (optional) path and data arguments is passed on to
curl.
For example:
$ GET /blogs.json -H "Range: items=1-10"
The -H "Range: items=1-10" argument will be passed to curl for you.
This makes it possible to do some more complex operations when
necessary.
$ POST -v -u user:test
In this example the path and data arguments were left off, but -v and
-u user:test will be passed through to curl, as you would expect.
Here are some useful options to try:
-v
verbose output, shows HTTP headers and status on stderr
-j
junk session cookies (refresh cookie-based session)
<-u $username:$password>
HTTP basic authentication
<-H $header>
add request header (this option can be added more than once)
Setting The Default Curl Options
Sometimes you want to send some options to curl for every request. It
would be tedious to have to repeat these options constantly. To tell
adenosine to always add certain curl options you can specify those
options when you call adenosine to set the URI base. For example:
$ adenosine example.com:8080 -H "Accept: application/json" -u user:pass
Every subsequent request will have the -H "Accept:..." and -u user:...
options automatically added. Each time adenosine is called this option
list is reset.
Per-Host/Per-Method Curl Configuration Files
Adenosine supports a per-host/per-method configuration file to help you
with frequently used curl options. Each host (including the port) can
have its own configuration file in the ~/.resty directory. The file
format is
$ GET [arg] [arg] ...
$ PUT [arg] [arg] ...
$ POST [arg] [arg] ...
$ DELETE [arg] [arg] ...
Where the args are curl command line arguments. Each line can specify
arguments for that HTTP verb only, and all lines are optional.
So, suppose you find yourself using the same curl options over and
over. You can save them in a file and adenosine will pass them to curl
for you. Say this is a frequent pattern for you:
$ adenosine localhost:8080
$ GET /Blah -H "Accept: application/json"
$ GET /Other -H "Accept: application/json"
...
$ POST /Something -H "Content-Type: text/plain" -u user:pass
$ POST /SomethingElse -H "Content-Type: text/plain" -u user:pass
...
It's annoying to add the -H and -u options to curl all the time. So
create a file ~/.resty/localhost:8080, like this:
~/.resty/localhost:8080
GET -H "Accept: application/json"
POST -H "Content-Type: text/plain" -u user:pass
Then any GET or POST requests to localhost:8080 will have the specified
options prepended to the curl command line arguments, saving you from
having to type them out each time, like this:
$ GET /Blah
$ GET /Other
...
$ POST /Something
$ POST /SomethingElse
...
Sweet! Much better.
Exit Status
Successful requests (HTTP respose with 2xx status) return zero.
Otherwise, the first digit of the response status is returned (i.e., 1
for 1xx, 3 for 3xx, 4 for 4xx, etc.) This is because the exit status is
an 8 bit integer---it can't be greater than 255. If you want the exact
status code you can always just pass the -v option to curl.
Using Adenosine In Shell Scripts !!!
Since adenosine creates the REST verb functions in the shell, when
using it from a script you must source it before you use any of the
functions. However, it's likely that you don't want it to be
overwriting the adenosine host history file, and you will almost always
want to set the URI base explicitly.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Load adenosine, don't write to the history file, and set the URI base
. /path/to/adenosine-exports -W 'https://myhost.com/data*.json'
# GET the JSON list of users, set each of their 'disabled' properties
# to 'false', and PUT the modified JSON back
GET /users | jsawk 'this.disabled = false' | PUT
Here the -W option was used when loading the script to prevent writing
to the history file and an initial URI base was set at the same time.
Then a JSON file was fetched, edited using jsawk
<http://github.com/micha/jsawk>, and re-uploaded to the server.
Application Configuration
Adenosine may be configured by placing a YAML document in
~/.adenosinerc.yml. More parts of adenosine will be configurable as
time goes on, but right now the only real configuration is for plugins.
Adenosine's plugin architecture (documented at "USING PLUGINS" in
App::Adenosine and "CREATING PLUGINS" in App::Adenosine) can be used to
color code headers, time the request, or more, if you choose to write
more plugins. Enabling a plugin is simple with the ~/.adenosinerc.yml
file. Here is how you would enable both
App::Adenosine::Plugin::Stopwatch and App::Adenosine::Plugin::Rainbow,
including a little bit of extra (non-required) configuration to
customize some colors for ::Rainbow.
plugins:
- ::Stopwatch
- ::Rainbow: {
request_method_color: cyan
}
The following would work if you didn't want to configure ::Rainbow
plugins:
- ::Stopwatch
- ::Rainbow
Another option allows the user to disable the XDG based directory
structure (typically ~/.config). Simply put the following in your
~/.adenosinerc.yml:
enable_xdg: 0
Working With JSON or XML Data
JSON REST web services require some special tools to make them
accessible and easily manipulated in the shell environment. The
following are a few scripts that make dealing with JSON data easier.
* Jsawk <http://github.com/micha/jsawk> can be used to process and
filter JSON data from and to adenosine, in a shell pipeline. This
takes care of parsing the input JSON correctly, rather than using
regexes and sed, awk, perl or the like, and prints the resulting
output in correct JSON format, as well.
GET /blogs.json |jsawk -n 'out(this.title)' # prints all the blog titles
* The included pp script will pretty-print JSON for you.
GET /blogs.json |pp # pretty-prints the JSON output from adenosine
* Another way to format JSON output:
$ echo '{"json":"obj"}' | python -mjson.tool
{
"json": "obj"
}
* The tidy tool can be used to format HTML/XML:
$ ~$ echo "<test><deep>value</deep></test>" | tidy -xml -q -i
<test>
<deep>value</deep>
</test>