Paw - pass response to subsequent call - data-binding

The documentation for Response Parsed Body Dynamic Value doesn't make much sense to me. I r-clicked on the JSON response element as described, in this case, userid
{"authorization":"T98J_J8QcH5lC83TOKZxaWB","userid":"T98J_J8QcH5lC83TOKZxaWB","lastLogin":"2014-12-15 15:17"}
but did not receive the menu option to Copy as Dynamic Value as stated. I got the standard text editor context menu. So, either I'm misreading the doc, or it's incorrect. Here's what I want to do: Take the dynamic value for the userid and pass it as part of the URL (not a parameter) to subsequent calls. Is this possible with Paw?

Here's how you can do it manually.
Right click on the field where you want to reuse the value. In the contextual menu, pick Response > Response Parsed Body
Pick the request you want to extract the response from. Enter the JSON key path. Make it explicitly JSON format (Automatic uses the Content-Type, which may not match in some cases).
The Copy as Dynamic Value may not work if your response is not interpreted as JSON, maybe the server is not setting a Content-Type: application/json header?

Related

Using a substring of a return value in a subsequent request

I'm attempting to construct a series of Paw calls using the variables feature. I have one situation I'm unable to solve.
At authentication into the server I'm using, I get a JSON response, with one value that looks like this:
endpoint = "https://sub.something.com/thingone/thingtwo.php?token=sometoken&id=blahblah"
The endpoint portion "https://sub.something.com/" is then used as the base for subsequent calls, where a call might be "GET https://sub.something.com/data?id=123".
I don't want to hardcode the endpoint in Paw, as the endpoint will vary based on factors I can't predict at my end.
Is there a way to do basic string processing like this either in Paw, or by calling out to a shell script and using the return value of said script as a Paw variable?
That's doable using that RegExp Match dynamic value extension. Click on that previous link and hit Install Extension.
Type "Regexp" in the field you expect this value to be used. Pick Regexp Match from the completion results:
Then enter a regexp that matches your need, https?://[^/]+/? should be good:
I've put your example string in the screenshot above to show that it works, but you can instead put a "pointer" (Response Dynamic Value) to the response you want:
In the choices, pick Response Parsed Body if you want to parse a JSON or XML from the reponse. If the string is simply in plain text in the response body, pick Response Raw Body.
Once these steps are completed, you've got a working "Pointer" + "Parser" to the response that extract the part of the string you need. You can do the same operation with another regex for the token…
Tip: these dynamic value tokens can be selected like text and copy/pasted (Cmd+C/Cmd+V) :-)

How to reuse variables from previous request in the Paw rest client?

I need to reuse value which is generated for my previous request.
For example, at first request, I make a POST to the URL /api/products/{UUID} and get HTTP response with code 201 (Created) with an empty body.
And at second request I want to get that product by request GET /api/products/{UUID}, where UUID should be from the first request.
So, the question is how to store that UUID between requests and reuse it?
You can use the Request Sent Dynamic values https://paw.cloud/extensions?extension_type=dynamic_value&q=request+send these will get the value used last time you sent a requst for a given request.
In your case you will want to combine the URLSentValue with the RegExMatch (https://paw.cloud/extensions/RegExMatch) to first get the url as it was last sent for a request and then extract the UUID from the url.
e.g
REQUEST A)
REQUEST B)
The problem is in your first requests answer. Just dont return "[...] an empty body."
If you are talking about a REST design, you will return the UUID in the first request and the client will use it in his second call: GET /api/products/{UUID}
The basic idea behind REST is, that the server doesn't store any informations about previous requests and is "stateless".
I would also adjust your first query. In general the server should generate the UUID and return it (maybe you have reasons to break that, then please excuse me). Your server has (at least sometimes) a better random generator and you can avoid conflicts. So you would usually design it like this:
CLIENT: POST /api/products/ -> Server returns: 201 {product_id: UUID(1234...)}
Client: GET /api/products/{UUID} -> Server returns: 200 {product_detail1: ..., product_detail2: ...}
If your client "loses" the informations and you want him to be later able to get his products, you would usually implement an API endpoint like this:
Client: GET /api/products/ -> Server returns: 200 [{id:UUID(1234...), title:...}, {id:UUID(5678...),, title:...}]
Given something like this, presuming the {UUID} is your replacement "variable":
It is probably so simple it escaped you. All you need to do is create a text file, say UUID.txt:
(with sample data say "12345678U910" as text in the file)
Then all you need to do is replace the {UUID} in the URL with a dynamic token for a file. Delete the {UUID} portion, then right click in the URL line where it was and select
Add Dynamic Value -> File -> File Content :
You will get a drag-n-drop reception widget:
Either press the "Choose File..." or drop the file into the receiver widget:
Don't worry that the dynamic variable token (blue thing in URL) doesn't change yet... Then click elsewhere to let the drop receiver go away and you will have exactly what you want, a variable you can use across URLs or anywhere else for that matter (header fields, form fields, body, etc):
Paw is a great tool that goes asymptotic to awesome when you explore the dynamic value capability. The most powerful yet I have found is the regular expression parsing that can parse raw reply HTML and capture anything you want for the next request... For example, if you UUID came from some user input and was ingested into the server, then returned in a html reply, you could capture that from the reply HTML and re-inject it to the URL, or any field or even add it to the cookies using the Dynamic Value capabilities of Paw.
#chickahoona's answer touches on the more normal way of doing it, with the first request posting to an endpoint without a UUID and the server returning it. With that in place then you can use the RegExpMatch extension to extract the value from the servers's response and use it in subsequent requests.
Alternately, if you must generate the UUID on the client side, then again the RegExpMatch extension can help, simply choose the create request's url for the source and provide a regexp that will strip the UUID off the end of it, such as /([^/]+)$.
A third option I'll throw out to you, put the UUID in an environment variable and just have all of your requests reference it from there.

Extract part of an URL behind a login page with Paw

I'm a newbie but I think Paw can do what i need :
I need to extract a session id behind a login page.
I go to https://admin.booking.com, filling the form (login and pass) and the landing page behind includes a session id :
https://admin.booking.com/pc/index.html?ses=xxxxyyyyyzzzzz11112222233333
I'd like to :
1) Push credentials with Paw as part of my request,
2) get the above item (ses) item as a response so i can use the php script extension provided by Paw and then call this script "on demand".
Is this possible ? If so, what should i do ?
Thanks for your help
UPDATE*: we've added a documentation article to describe the process a little more: Login via a web form in Paw. We've detailed the process to deal with CSRF tokens too.
Paw isn't quite yet ready for handling web/HTML forms. Though, there's one way to do it the right way: if you inspect the form with the Chrome dev tools you'll find the name of the input from the DOM/HTML:
In your case, you have the inputs: loginname, password, lang.
Also, find the <form…> tag to see what's the action attribute. If there's no action attribute (like in your example), it means the target URL for your form is the current page's URL (https://admin.booking.com/ in your case). Also, make sure the method="POST" is also there in the <form…> tag, otherwise this method won't work.
Then jump into Paw and set:
URL (in your case https://admin.booking.com/)
method to POST
go to the Body tab and use "Form URL-Encoded + fill up the fields from your form
If all works, you'll see Paw show a redirection request, and if you go to the right-hand side panel under "Response" > "Headers", you should see a Location header with a value similar to the URL you initially mentioned (https://admin.booking.com/pc/index.html?ses=xxxxyyyyyzzzzz11112222233333). Hurray! You got your value into Paw!
Now that you have that, you can create in a new request (click on the + button at the bottom of the left-hand side list). And wherever you want to use this session token/ID, you can insert a dynamic value to retrieve that URL value. You have more infos here, in our docs, but I'll describe the steps here:
On whichever field you want to insert the token, right-click and pick Responses > Response Header.
Make sure you pick the first request in the "Request" dropdown menu, and enter Location in the "Header" field:
You should see the value of the Location header of the previous response appear here.
Now what you want to do is to extract only the part you want (i.e. the value of the ses param in your case). For that you'll need that extension for Paw, so please install it now: https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/RegExMatch
Copy the dynamic value you have just inserted (the blue token), and right-click on that field to insert a new dynamic value, and pick Extensions > RegExp match:
In the Input field, paste the previous dynamic value you copied. And use the RegExp field to write a regular expression that will successfully extract the part of the URL you want (this should work in your case ses=(.*)).
Now that you're set up. You should be able to use this little new blue token wherever you like and automagically extract the value from the previous form. And whenever you send again the initial request, and get a new token, everything else will also update! :)
It was a little long guide, but I hope this will help you and hopefully others too.

How do HTTP conversations flow?

I know that clients and servers most commonly communicate through HTTP forms. I know enough about the GET methods, but the little I do know about POST methods is that they're used to submit data to the server. However, when the server receives a POST method and processes the data, it sends a status code like 200 etc., but how does the server send more data? I know there's a body but what does it look like? Does it have parameters and values just like a POST method?
The format of the body is specified in the Content-Type header.
A commonly used Content-Type for form data submission is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. The body for such a request should look something like this:
key1=value1&key2=value+with+spaces
Where key1 and key2 are input names and value1 and value+with+spaces are the corresponding values. Note that key names and values are url encoded
Another common type is application/json, which means the request body should be interpreted as JSON data, for example:
{
"key": "value",
"another_key": "value"
}
So it's just data, and the Content-Type header tells the server how to interpret it.
Edit: A good way to see what's going on is create a form with method="post", and analyze the request with your browser developer tools when the form is submitted.

Can AS3 set the Accept Header for Flash Player (not AIR)

"Accept" is not listed in the forbidden headers in the documentation here:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/net/URLRequestHeader.html
but cant seem to set it in a GET request. Help!
You are allowed to specify the "accept" header, but only on a POST request with one or more variables.
The documentation comments mention this:
For browser-based Flash/AS3 applications, the only way to successfully set
or modify request headers on a URLRequest object is to set its method to
POST as well as send at least one variable of data along with the request
(i.e. with URLVariables). Otherwise the headers will silently remain
unchanged.

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