httpie for JSON data

curl is great, but I do find myself reaching for httpie to simplify header manipulation and JSON handling.

For example, I’m tinkering with the World History Gazetteer API and the JSON payload can get pretty big and indented. httpie’s http command makes this relatively easy with a structure that is a lot easier to script. Here’s my shell script:

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#!/bin/sh
TOKEN=MY_SECRET_TOKEN
http --verbose POST https://whgazetteer.org/reconcile/ \
	-A bearer -a $TOKEN \
	User-Agent:AlwaysMap \
	queries[q1][query]='Denver' \
	queries[q1][mode]=fuzzy \
	queries[q1][fclasses][]=A \
	queries[q1][fclasses][]=P \
	queries[q1][countries][]=GB \
	queries[q1][countries][]=US

That describes the structure of the JSON payload pretty well, including the arrays like countries and fclasses. And here’s the payload, minus the massive response:

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$ ./whg.sh
POST /reconcile/ HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json, */*;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, zstd
Authorization: Bearer MY_SECRET_TOKEN
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 108
Content-Type: application/json
Host: whgazetteer.org
User-Agent: AlwaysMap

{
    "queries": {
        "q1": {
            "countries": [
                "GB",
                "US"
            ],
            "fclasses": [
                "A",
                "P"
            ],
            "mode": "fuzzy",
            "query": "Denver"
        }
    }
}

I personally find the httpie structure a lot easier to get right with all the quotes, commas, and braces. Especially in shell script!

I also like how the Bearer token is easy to set with -A bearer and then -a $TOKEN.

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