aToad #28: ReqBin

Online API testing tool

The last tool I wrote about was a desktop API testing tool, ARC, well here’s an online one this time, if you don’t want to bother with running software locally. ReqBin allows you to send pretty much any HTTP request you want, from their website, with their IP (you get to choose between, at the moment, 2 server locations: US or Germany).

Compared to ARC, I find it more convenient if I need to just run one quick request. Notably, the UI is more comfortable IMO. But if I want to run (and save) a bunch, I stick with ARC.
A big thing to be aware of is that requests go through their servers (as I already wrote above). It’s convenient to hide your IP, but it also means that whatever you send (API keys…), you send to them first. It’s up to you to see if you want to use production keys there…

Another issue is that, like Postman, they add a bunch of extra headers compared to your original request. Including your user agent (yup, they hide your IP, but not your browser). For instance, here are the headers in a request I made to httpbin (which is another nice service, that will mirror whatever request you send them) with ARC:
"headers": {
"Content-Length": "0",
"Host": "httpbin.org",
"X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "xxxx"
}
And here are the headers from the same request made using ReqBin:
"headers": {
"Accept": "application/json",
"Accept-Encoding": "deflate, gzip",
"Content-Length": "0",
"Content-Type": "application/json",
"Host": "httpbin.org",
"User-Agent": "xxxx",
"X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "xxxx"
}
As you can see, 4 extra junk headers… “Content-Length” and “Host” appear unavoidable, “X-Amzn-Trace-Id” seems to be added by httpbin.

So well, keeping those little caveats in mind, this service can be useful on occasions.