nhttp

nhttp stands for neovim-http

A nvim plugin to make http calls right from nvim http requests is a standard introduced by Intellij idea. More details can be found here This plugin uses only neovim to issue http requests, obtain responses and process the output.

pre-requisites

The plugin uses curl to make http calls. There are no other pre-requisites to installing and running the plugin. Just ensure curl is installed and available in the path. Also, if nhttp_cmd is configured, that application also needs to be available in the path

install

install via any neovim package manager:

'prashanth-hegde/nhttp'

configurations

Here are the global configurations available to set

config	default value	description
nttp_switch_to_output_window	false	if true, when the output is returned, the cursor switches to the output window
nhttp_split	vertical	valid options are vertical and horozontal. describes how output window should be split
nhttp_env	prod	see the environment config json example for reference
nhttp_cmd	""	execute this command on the output window after getting the response, you can use jq, jpath or similar to format the output if needed. Use ? as a placeholder
nhttp_config_file	""	the configuration file path for json

nhttp_switch_to_output_window

if true, when the output is returned, the cursor switches to the output window

nhttp_split

Available options are vertical and horizontal. Configures how the output window is split relative to the open buffer. If vertial, it opens the output window to the right, if horizontal, it opens the output window at the bottom

nhttp_env

When there are secrets to be configured, or variables to be defined, it could be defined as properties in json file and put it in a relative path or an absolute path of the http file. check out the examples directory for more details

nhttp_cmd

This is a custom property that can be set by the user to perform post processing of the output For instance, lets say you gor a compressed json as a result, you could perform post processing on the json to format the json, map/filter by using something like jq, jpath or similar

If the output is text, you could set a custom grep or awk pattern to only show the lines you care about. If this option is not configured, the output rendered as-is and no post-processing is done.

In all cases, a special wildcard ? is used to represent the output. For example, id you want to use jq on a json output, you could the following to pretty print the output

let nhttp_cmd = "jq . ?"

nhttp_config_file

Per the http documentation, it is mentioned that the environment configuration is specified as http-client.env.json.

nhttp lets the user to override this config file to be present anywhere. If an absolute path is not provided, the config file is assumed to be relative to the file that is being operated upon. Also the config file is only needed if there are any variables present in the http file. If there are no variables, neither the config is needed nor the file is needed to be configured

example configuration

vim.g["nhttp_cmd"] = "jpath . ?"
vim.g["nhttp_switch_to_output_window"] = "false"

recommended settings The file extension .http is not readily recognized by vim. It is identified as a config file. In order to properly treat it and issue keyboard shortcuts, you can make small tweaks to the startup to readily recognize the file and use keyboard shortcuts to trigger an http request

-- nhttp execute on <CR> key
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("FileType", {
  pattern = 'conf',
  callback = function()
    vim.keymap.set('n', '<CR>', '<CMD>NHttp<CR>', {buffer=true})
  end,
})

override global configuration

One way to configure variables is via vim global variables as shown. However, if the user wants to override the global variables with file specific variables, it can be achieved via setting the variable within the file at the top. This is a nhttp specific feature, and not related to Intellij

commands

NHttp

This is the executor command - It parses the request under the cursor and issues a curl request, and renders the response in the output buffer. For easy trigger, this command can be mapped to a keystroke if needed

NHttpCmd

This command takes the request under the cursor and generates the curl command and displays the curl command in the output window

NHttpCopy

This command copies the generated curl command under the cursor and puts it in the register '*' Meaning, the clipboard contents now has the curl command from the request in the cursor section

todo

• graphql support
• convert to 100% lua based, no vimscript
• the time taken metric has a bug in it, needs to be fixed

references

1. http client
2. jpath