Hurl is a Swiss Army knife for making sequences of HTTP requests, defined in plain text files using Hurl-specific syntax. Beyond sending requests, Hurl can validate responses, ensuring a request returns a specific HTTP status code; assert conditions on response headers or content using XPATH, JSONPath or regular expressions; and extract response data into variables, which can then be used to chain requests.
With its feature set, Hurl is useful for simple API automations but also serves as an automated API testing tool. Its ability to generate detailed test reports in HTML or JSON enhances its utility for testing workflows. While dedicated tools like Bruno and Postman offer GUIs and additional features, we like Hurl for its simplicity. Like Bruno, which also uses plain text files, Hurl tests can be stored in the code repository.
