[Feature Request] Support for editing variables inside Posting

[FedeAbella]

Suppose you're trying out an api of the form GET /api/items/{item_id}. Currently, there's only 2 ways to manipulate item_id:

• Edit it directly in the URL of the request
• Have it as an environment variable in an .env file

I'd argue both of this have serious downsides if you want to be changing item_id often:

• Editing the request URL means risking saving the request with the hardcoded item_id instead of the placeholder, if you're testing and changing other stuff, thus losing the placeholder for future uses, or for sharing the collection. If you want to avoid this, you should reset the URL to the placeholder each time you're done, which is cumbersome.
• Having it as an environment variable means if you want to be changing it often, you need to keep switching to a separate editor to modify the .env file (good thing, it reloads, but still). It'd also clutter the .env file with variables which are maybe not needed in an .env file.

Having a separate widget allowing one to modify per-request variables would allow us to save a request with a {item_id} or $ITEM_ID placeholder, and edit it on-the-fly without leaving posting. This could allow editing only variables related to the current request, or "collection-level" variables (say, stuff that relates to the entire collection but maybe you don't want to keep on an .env, or even the loaded .env variables, maybe even saving them to the same .env file? (A man can dream, but I think the first one would be a great first improvement)

[hdxscott]

I am currently testing out Postman alternatives. The lack of this one feature is what is disqualifying so many of the options, including Posting. It is a very common pattern to make a request, get a value, use that value for another request. In postman you can highlight text in a response with the mouse, right click, and quickly assign the highlighted text to any environment variable.

For example. You would list some items. Find the id of a specific item. Then put that id into a variable. Then make another request to update or delete that item.

It seems like a common pattern. Is there a better way to execute this flow that I am missing?

[FedeAbella]

I've written some small python scripts to run as post-request, and you can save values from the response to your environment that way, and use them on other requests. It's a bit cumbersome, but it works in the meantime.

[hdxscott]

@FedeAbella Thanks for the quick reply, but I don’t think that is going to cut it for my use case.

[darrenburns]

Totally agree this would be a lovely feature, and it's possibly the most requested feature in the repo at the moment, but I don't have a great deal of time for open source in general at the moment.

Would happily take a PR from anyone willing - but I may have a bit of time next month that I can add this feature.

[FedeAbella]

@darrenburns That's very reasonable and perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, don't think I know nearly enough python to be able to contribute an entire widget, but I'm happy to wait until you get the time, or someone else contributes to it :)

[darrenburns]

I took a stab at this and released a first go at it in 2.9.0:

posting-path-params.mp4