Making an HTTP Request

Making a Request

This input will make a HTTP request - by default ‘GET’.

A useful testing URL is https://httpbin.org/anything, because it will return exactly what it received in the request.

First, set Url to this.

It will return a single JSON document, formatted over multiple lines, so the first thing we need to do is set JSON and Ignore Line Breaks to both being true, since the default is false.

To quickly see the result, click on the Run & Trace button on the the top left.

The result will appear on the right hand size next to the editor items:

{
  "args": {},
  "data": "",
  "files": {},
  "form": {},
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-6757ea61-75eabe7826c84e78192f3070"
  },
  "json": null,
  "method": "GET",
  "origin": "197.91.187.145",
  "url": "https://httpbin.org/anything"
}

We can now add various items to the request:

• set new Headers
• set Query
• set Body

{
  "args": {
    "ITEM": "1"
  },
  "data": "{\"greeting\": \"hello\"}",
  "files": {},
  "form": {},
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip",
    "Content-Length": "21",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "X-Amzn-Trace-Id": "Root=1-6757ef19-565679cf4b1943387934ef77",
    "X-My-Header": "HELLO"
  },
  "json": {
    "greeting": "hello"
  },
  "method": "POST",
  "origin": "197.91.187.145",
  "url": "https://httpbin.org/anything?ITEM=1"
}

Streaming Data

It is common for inputs to return multiple lines, each representing a single event

For instance, if the Url is https://httpbin.org/stream/5 then we get 5 JSON objects.

So JSON must be enabled, but not Ignore Line Breaks.

Each one of these events will pass through all the steps; if you click Run and go to Run Output then you will see each event has an added time field from the Time action.

Repeating the Request

The next step is scheduling it to happen more than once - select Trigger and then Interval.

There are two time-based ways to schedule jobs - this is a simple duration expressed in human units (for instance “5h” etc.) If you need to run a job at precise times like on the hour, then Cron is preferred.

You can safely hit Run because these transient jobs will always end:

• the event limit was reached
• the time limit was reached
• there was an error
• the job was cancelled

Click the Run Output button, and click Run:

Notice the Run time limit and the Output event limit.

If left alone, our scheduled job will end when 10 seconds is up - the default run time limit. We will get 5 events, as expected.

While running, the Cancel Job button is active and can be used to bail out at any time.