Responses

Everything a server sends back shows in the response pane: the body in the view that suits it, the headers, the cookies, the message as it came, its bytes in hex and on the wire. The status and timing sit in the line under the URL bar. Bodies are written to disk as they arrive, so a response of hundreds of megabytes opens as fast as a small one.

Status, time and sizeCopy Anchor Link

After a send, the line under the URL bar shows:

• the status, coloured by its class (2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx); a request that didn't get a response shows Failed or Cancelled instead,
• a bar for each phase of the exchange, growing while the request runs,
• the total time.

Rest the pointer on the line and a card opens with the details:

When a request was sent again (on a new connection, or over HTTP/1.1), the card says why. When it failed, the card shows the error.

The response tabsCopy Anchor Link

Body viewsCopy Anchor Link

Choose a view in the row at the top of the Body tab:

Every view is offered for every body, so a response sent with the wrong content type can still be read as what it is. The content type picks the view a response opens in, and Echolot remembers the view you choose for each kind of body: after you choose JSON Tree for one JSON response, the next ones open in the tree.

HTML and scripts are never run or rendered. Preview and Open in Default App show them as text.

Long lines scroll sideways in the text views. Click the wrap button, or choose View › Wrap Long Lines, to wrap them. View › Bigger Code (⌘+), Smaller Code (⌘-) and Actual Code Size (⌘0) change the size of code everywhere.

JSON and XML treesCopy Anchor Link

The trees show each value's key or index, its type and its value; a collapsed object or array shows how many items it holds. An array of more than 1,000 items is split into ranges such as [0 … 999], so even a huge array opens at once.

Rest the pointer on a value for its buttons:

• Open in browser, for a value that is a web address,
• Copy Value,
• Store in a Variable…, which keeps the value in a variable and, if you like, updates it after every send. See Response captures.

Right-click a row for more:

• In the JSON tree: Copy Path (the JSONPath to the value, such as $.items[0].sku), Copy Value and Add Assertion, which adds a check to the Tests tab that the value equals what it is now.
• In the XML tree: Copy XPath and Copy Value.

Rest the pointer on a value that is an image address and a thumbnail opens beside it. The image is fetched like a browser fetches a picture: without your cookies or credentials, up to 10 MB, and not recorded in history. data:image/… values are shown without any request. Rest on a value that looks like a date (Unix time in seconds, milliseconds, microseconds or nanoseconds, or an ISO 8601 timestamp) and it shows as a readable date.

The XML tree takes bodies up to 50 MB, and Form and MessagePack up to 64 MB. For larger ones, use Text and find.

FindCopy Anchor Link

Press ⌘F (Request › Find in Body) or click the magnifying glass.

• In Text and JSON, type what to find. Aa matches case; .* makes it a regular expression. The bar says where you are, such as 3 of 1,204. Press ↩ or ⌘G for the next match and ⇧⌘G for the previous one. Up to 10,000 matches are marked; the count shows + when there are more.
• In JSON Tree, Form and MessagePack, the bar takes a JSONPath such as $.items[0] and goes to that value. It says Not found when nothing is there.

Press Esc to close the bar.

Large responsesCopy Anchor Link

Echolot never holds a body in memory. It streams to a file as it arrives, and the viewers read only the part on screen:

• The first lines show while the rest is still arriving. While a body downloads, the details card shows how much has come.
• JSON starts pretty-printing as soon as the body starts, and follows it as it grows.
• JSON Tree builds only the rows you expand.
• Find searches the whole body on disk.

Try it with Catalog › Export the catalog in Alpenglow: 40,000 products, about 14 MB.

Bodies are kept on disk up to the size set in Settings › Storage › Keep response bodies up to; above it, the least recently used are removed, except bodies open in a tab. An older response whose body was removed says This response's body is no longer stored. See Storage and encryption.

HeadersCopy Anchor Link

The Headers tab lists the response headers in the order they came. Rest the pointer on a row, or select it and press Space (↑ and ↓ to move), to see the value in full, what the header is for and what its value says. Right-click a header for Copy Value, Copy Header and Add Check, which adds a check on that header to the Tests tab.

CookiesCopy Anchor Link

The Cookies tab has three parts:

• Sent with the request: the cookies that went out, and where each came from.
• Set by the response: each Set-Cookie, with its attributes, and a warning when the jar refused it.
• Stored in this window: everything in the window's cookie jar. Remove one with its button, or all with Clear All.

When Send and store cookies is off for the request, the tab says so. See Cookies.

Raw, Hex and WireCopy Anchor Link

• Raw shows the response as one message: status line, headers, a blank line, then the decoded body (its first 64 MB; the Body tab has all of it).
• Hex shows the body's bytes: offsets, 16 bytes a row in two groups, and their ASCII. Select bytes with the mouse or with the arrow keys and ⇧; copying gives hex pairs, or text when you selected in the ASCII column.
• Wire shows the bytes exactly as they crossed the connection: choose Sent or Received. You see the headers as framed and a compressed body before decoding. Up to 1 MB in each direction is kept; the tab says when it shows only the first part.

Save and shareCopy Anchor Link

Click the save button at the top right of the Body tab:

• Save Body… writes the body to a file (decoded).
• Open in Default App opens it in the app your Mac uses for its type.
• Save Encoded Body… writes the body as it came, still compressed; only for compressed responses.
• Export Exchange as HAR… writes the request and response as a HAR file.

To share the request rather than the response, use Request › Copy as cURL (⌥⌘C) or Request › Generate Code… (⌥⌘G). See HTTP requests.

Earlier responses and comparingCopy Anchor Link

Every send is kept in history. The clock button with a count, at the end of the line under the URL bar, opens this request's responses: each with its status, time, who sent it (you, a run or an agent), duration and size.

• Click a response to show it. A bar above the response pane says Past response; Show Latest goes back.
• To compare two responses, show one, then hover another in the list and click its compare button, or click Compare with Latest in the Past response bar. The comparison shows what was added and removed.
• Clear History of This Request… in the list's menu deletes this request's history.

See History for the whole workspace's history.

When a request failsCopy Anchor Link

When no response came, the pane shows the error, such as The request timed out, and Try Again. Two other buttons can appear:

• Review Scripts…, when the request's scripts came from outside Echolot and need your trust before they run. See Scripts and tests.
• Allow Access…, in the App Store edition, when the request names a file the app may not read yet.