Re:HTTPie – A user-friendly CLI HTTP client
by BoorishBears on Sunday December 01, 2019 @01:51PM
(#21677107)
The third feature listed after "syntax" and "formatting" is "Built-in JSON support"
It's a JSON-centric tool made for people who work with APIs that use JSON in very compatible way, with JSON-centric defaults
Changing the accepted type matches behavior of Js HTTP libraries like `request`, where accept and request content types are set in unison by default.
This stuff is all sane defaults for the people who are usually in Postman firing off JSON data to APIs that all look very similar.
"Sane defaults" don't exist in a vacuum, writing (and escaping) properly formatted JSON is a pain (see jq and how the 2nd paragraph in how to even invoke it is dedicated to escaping)
The tool defaults to removing that pain point in a very easy to understand way.
The program switches around between HTTP methods, content types, query building, request serialization, etc, at every minor syntactic change to the command line arguments. The fact that a foo=bar implies that the request content type AND the accepted response content type will be set to application/json AND the foo=bar is POSTed as a JSON object isn't a "sane default."
That is not to say it can't be a useful utility. The quirky syntax for query parameters, JSON-serialized request body, etc, can be learned and is quite concise, so after the initial learning curve, it can be used very efficiently.
"Sane defaults" is false advertising, because it implies the least amount of surprise. This tool is the opposite. It is unintuitive but potentially very efficient once learned.