Hurl.it was originally created by Chris Wanstranth and Leah Culver at the 2009 Rails Rumble. We (Twilio) just took over maintenance of the project because it has some obvious utility when testing URL callbacks and webhooks. We want to make some improvements to it, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. You can post them here or create an issue on the current home of the project on Github: https://github.com/twilio/hurl
For chrome, I like using the "REST Console" extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cokgbflfommojglbmb...), which I believe has all of the benefits you listed. The "credentials stored in a browser" thing is the main reason for me to be using it.
What I want to say is that services like this have a security flaw by design which allows random people to execute strange statements in the name of Hurl.
There are certainly other ways to execute malicious HTTP requests (for example, let the Google Bot do it), but still, it should be pointed out.
Yes, not Hurl itself. But Hurl can be used to execute malicious statements.
It is a difference, whether an attacker uses his own IP address (or a setup with various VPNs and proxies) or uses Hurl for it so that the target website sees only Hurl's IP in its logs.
In times of free WiFi, the traceability of malicious requests is definitely reduced anyway, but Hurl could potentially add another layer that can be used by an attacker to obscure his/her origin. I'm not saying that this is a major security issue, it is just a flaw by design, which I wanted to point out.
Very useful - to send a curl to someone - to explain why a response is incorrect or provide context about a service response... Sure you could use curl + gist - but there is something I nicer here - for example on my iPhone I could use hurl.it to explain a bad response via email without having to drop into a shell... Great service thanks!
No need to pay, we (Twilio) are now actively maintaining it and going to be adding some new features. Common templates exists (not documented) yet. You can put values in URL parameters and the fields will autopopulate effectively giving you URL-based templates. Responses are already saved, click the permalink to get back to them later.
If you have any other feedback items, feel free to post them here or on https://github.com/twilio/hurl and we'll take a look at them. Pull requests are even better.
If you're on OS X, I sell one for $2 on the Mac App Store - http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/. I'm working on a major update, and I'd be interested in hearing some more details about the features that would make a tool like this useful to you.
If you (or anyone else on HN) want to check it out but don't want to shell out a few bucks for it, send me an email (<my username>@gmail.com) and I'll get you a coupon code for a free copy.
Interesting idea, could be very useful. One thing with this kind of service is always how they handle validation of data from the 3rd party service (eg, in headers). So as an example http://hurl.it/hurls/db870b49c7203ec9acb47ba7769c126146b1768... executes javascript in the context of their site... (just a pop-up box with hi, but could be any script..)
I've used this extensively before; brilliant little service, but I've recently started using the "REST Console" Chrome extension, which is bloody brilliant:
Do you have some limits in place, or can I just expect it to proxy all of my web traffic when I want it to (which I can do with one JS statement right on this page)? Magic WebKit Inspector is going to ruin your hosting bill.
Minor bug-report: when you keep clicking on the 'Send' button continuously it will occasionally show the JSON response in-browser instead of updating the UI.
And no, I'm not crazy. I was trying to test GitHub's rate-limiting. ;)
And you can follow @hurlit for updates