GetIt

Open Source HTTP client to test your API's.

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Welcome to the Git repository of GetIt. GetIt is a small open source application to send API request using a cross-platform GUI. The main advantage of GetIt is the fact that it's native, no matter what platform you use, and it's completely open source.

Table of contents

• 1. Overview
  • 1.1 Sharing requests
  • 1.2 Roadmap
• 2. External dependencies
• 3. Build
  • 3.1 MacOS
  • 3.2 Linux
  • 3.3 Windows
• 4. Package
  • 4.1 MacOS
  • 4.2 Linux
  • 4.3 Windows
• 5. Automated testing
• 6. Contribute
  • 6.1 Branching strategy

1. Overview

GetIt's main focus is providing an easy user interface to send HTTP request to your API endpoints. GetIt is developed for developers who'd like a native application which is capable of saving requests in a modern file format.

1.1 Sharing requests

GetIt uses the JSON-format to store request information, however, when you've got a request that uses files these files aren't incorporated into the GetIt request file.

The main features of GetIt compared to the alternatives are the way requests can be shared. There are other applications which let's you synchronise a number of requests using a proprietary cloud solution with a subscription. In the design of GetIt we took the sharing of requests very seriously but since we're not an entire company we can't setup an entire cloud solution. Thus we've made sure the file contents are human readable an easy to check-in using VCS.

1.2 Roadmap

Because GetIt is maintained in the spare time, not all features that we'd like are implemented as of yet. Some of the features we'd like to see in GetIt are listed below. These features are also added as issues on GitHub so the status can be viewed in the projects tab.

• Multiple authentication flows
  • OAuth
  • JWT
  • Basic Auth
• Environment variables
  • Variables that are stored in the request itself
  • Variables that are stored in the settings of GetIt
    • To allow API secrets to be stored, but not checked into VCS
• Automated stress testing

2. External dependencies

GetIt uses CMake to download and compile most of it's dependencies. However, not all dependencies are aviable through this method so these need to be installed on the machine itself before compiling. When downloading and executing a pre-built release from the Releases tab on Github, these dependencies aren't required.

• Qt
  • The GUI framework used by GetIt
• Boost
  • Helper libraries for formatting strings and used by CppRestSdk, which in turn is used by GetIt as the HTTP library
• Ninja
  • Cross-platform build system
• CMake
  • Cross-platform build tool generator

3. Build

3.1 MacOS

# Disable warnings as error, these warning are from the CppRestSdk dependency
cmake . -G Ninja -D CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-w"
ninja GetIt

This will create the ./bin/GetIt.app file. This can be executed by double-clicking it in Finder.

Please note that this app bundle does NOT include the dependencies or the Qt framework. When you move the bundle to a different location on your computer (or another computer altogether) the application might not start.

3.2 Linux

NOT TESTED YET!

The following steps have not been tested yet, if you follow these steps, and it works, please open a PR to remove this warning. If these steps don't work, and you've got a working solution. Please also open a PR to include your steps here.

cmake . -G Ninja
ninja GetIt

This will create the ./bin/GetIt binary file. It can be executed by either running ./bin/GetIt from the terminal or double-clicking the file through your file browser.

3.3 Windows

NOT TESTED YET!

The following steps have not been tested yet, if you follow these steps, and it works, please open a PR to remove this warning. If these steps don't work, and you've got a working solution. Please also open a PR to include your steps here.

cmake . -G Ninja
ninja GetIt

This will create the ./bin/GetIt.exe executable. It can be executed by double-clicking the file from Explorer.

4. Package

4.1 MacOS

Build the MacOS app bundle with all dependencies and framework included by running the package.sh script in the MacOS packaging folder.

sh ./packaging/macos/package.sh

This will create the ./bin/GetIt.app app bundle with all required dependencies. This file can be distributed across multiple systems.

4.2 Linux

This is not completed yet, there is going to be a script to generate a flatpak bundle.

4.3 Windows

This is not completed yet, there is going to be a script to generate a Windows executable file.

5. Automated testing

To validate that GetIt works, and keeps working through various updates GetIt includes automated unit tests using Catch2. These tests are automatically executed when you create a PR or when directly pushing to the main branch (which should NEVER be done!).

To execute these tests manually you need to specify the getit_tests build target.

cmake . -G Ninja
ninja getit_tests

# Execute the test cases
./bin/getit_tests

This will generate an application that will test GetIt when executed.

6. Contribute

If there's a feature you'd like to see, or a bug you've encountered? Please let us know! Or, even better, fix it yourself! If you'd just like to contribute back to GetIt but you're not quite sure how to help, take a look at the roadmap for features we'd love to see in GetIt.

All contributions are welcome, so feel free to join the open source community and support GetIt through your expertise!

To make sure everyone can contribute to GetIt we value the quality and understandability of our code. When you're building a feature, or patching a bug and you've made a decision. Please document this decision in the docs/design.md document. This will help future contributors understand your rationale. If you've updated some logic in the code, please always update related test cases or add test cases to test your logic.

6.1 Branching strategy

You've got your idea to help us out, but you're not quite sure how to setup your branch. We'll we've got you covered!

This project does not use a development branch but uses short lived feature branches which are directly merged into main. We've chosen this strategy 'cause we believe in release often, release fast, there's no need for your feature to gather dust in a stale development branch. However we do have some guidelines:

• If you're contributing a feature use the feature/<your-feature> naming convention
• If you're contributing a bug fix use the bugfix/<bug-name> naming convention
• If you're contributing to documentation use the documentation/<type-of-documentation> naming convention
• If you're contributing a small fix, like a version bump to a dependency, use the hotfix/<hotfix-type>-<name> naming convention