Add value from the response to the environment

[gadton]

I'm testing a system that uses an authentication based on a service. This login service returnes something like a session id as part of the response (JSON). This session id I have to send in subsequent requests as header value. Right now I have to add it manually to the environment after each login. Therefore I would like to have a simple way to add a value of the response to a given key in the environment.

[frigus02]

Hi @gadton. This is a great idea and it is definitely on my todo list.

I struggeling to come up with a good solution for it, which is why I postponed this idea. Lots of questions come to my mind:

• Where do wou configure this?
  • Request: select an environment where to inject certain values of the response.
  • Environment: pull something out of recently made requests/responses.
• How do you specify what part of the response you want to have?
  • You might want to pull values out of the response headers or body.
  • The body could be JSON, but also XML or something else.
  • A JSON path might work, e.g. body.data.0.session or headers.my-custom-data for a response like this:

    {
        "headers": {
            "content-type": "application/json",
            "my-custom-data": "bananas"
        },
        "body": {
            "data": [
                { "session": "secret123!" }
            ]
        }
    }
    

  • This might be hard to understand, though. How should the UI for this look like?

Still, I do really like the idea. Apart from your login requirement, it could also make it possible to easily do a chain of dependend requests.

[gadton]

Hi @frigus02, here are some ideas:

• a manual solution could be to just add a context menu to the response view providing an item "Set selection to environment variable" with a sub item for each environment variable
• automated solution
  • I think the request is the right place
  • this would lead to something like response-triggers; each trigger should have
    • a check if it should be executed (e.g. status == 200)
    • an action
      • as you proposed +1
      • for the experienced: a few lines of JavaScript with access to request, response and env

Hope that helps

[frigus02]

Thanks a lot for your ideas. I like the response-triggers.

A few lines of JavaScript would be amazing. I'm not sure which security issues this might bring. How can you savely evaluate JavaScript in a browser extension, which has elevated permissions? I'm sure there are solutions for, though.

[OlegKyiashko]

workaround after receive response you can copy session id to variable {SESSION_ID} and it will be used in all requests