For the past 6 months we’ve been silently working on a set of new applications and a brand new application development framework that will underpin all of our current and future security tools. I am happy to report that the initial push is over and it is now time to make our first release.
Without further ado, I would like to introduce you to the brand new, fully refurbished, http client for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome – simply known as Rest. You may have encountered Rest in the past and stayed with the impression that it was just the less capable but free version of our own Resend tool and you would have been absolutely right. As of now Rest not only remains to be free but also becomes a lot more powerful than its now distant cousin.
While in Beta, Rest delivers a fully capable modern HTTP IDE which allows you to easily build HTTP requests with a great degree of flexibility and customizations. Every single type of request can be expressed through a series of dynamic fields – from URL query parameters to file upload forms and much more. The IDE is simple and modern looking and provides as much guidance when needed without overstepping its responsibility and interfere with your requirements.
HTTP requests can be fully parameterised with dynamic values. You can encode, decode, hash and perform various types of mutations and custom logic dynamically, which is a powerful ally when working with very complex APIs which require a fair degree of automation. This feature is unique to Rest when compared to other HTTP clients for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
Last but not least, your HTTP requests are rendered in their original form so you can clearly see how they will work when sent down the wire. You can transform the requests into other formats as well, such as curl commands or even generate code snippets for your programming language of choice.
All in all, although there is some outstanding work to be completed, we are very happy to see Rest brought to live and ready to serve. You can use Rest direcly from our own store or Chrome's Web Store. As usual, we are excited to hear what do you think and how we can make Rest better.