HTTPlex - a simple HTTP request & response service

HTTPlex is an Elixir-based web service that provides a simple HTTP request and response service. It is inspired from httpbin and helps developers test and debug HTTP requests.

Features

The project is built using Elixir and the Phoenix framework. It defines a controller (HTTPlexWeb.APIController) that handles various HTTP endpoints:

HTTP Methods:

index/2: Welcome message
get/2, post/2, put/2, patch/2, delete/2: Return request info for respective HTTP methods
anything/2: Accepts and returns data for any HTTP method

Request Inspection:

ip/2: Returns the client's IP address
user_agent/2: Returns the user-agent header
headers/2: Returns all request headers

Response Inspection:

response_headers/2: Sets custom response headers

Auth:

basic_auth/2, hidden_basic_auth/2: Test Basic Authentication (hidden version doesn't send WWW-Authenticate header)
bearer/2: Tests Bearer Token Authentication
digest_auth/2: Tests Digest Authentication

Status codes:

status/2: Returns response with specified status code

Request formats:

forms_post/2: Handles form data submission

Response formats:

html_response/2: Returns an HTML response
json_response/2: Returns a JSON response
xml/2: Returns an XML response
image/2: Returns an image in specified format

Redirects:

absolute_redirect/2: Performs absolute redirects
redirect_to/2: Redirects to specified URL
redirectx/2: Performs multiple redirects
relative_redirect/2: Performs relative redirects

Dynamic data:

uuid/2: Generates and returns a UUID
random_bytes/2: Returns random bytes
deny/2: Simulates denied access by robots.txt
robots_txt/2: Returns a sample robots.txt file
delay/2: Delays the response for specified seconds
drip/2: Drips data over a duration
links/2: Returns page containing n links
range/2: Streams n bytes with Accept-Ranges and Content-Range headers
stream_bytes/2: Streams n bytes of data
stream_json/2: Streams JSON data

Cookies:

get_cookies/2: Returns all cookies sent with the request
set_cookies/2, set_cookie/2: Set multiple or a single cookie
delete_cookies/2: Deletes specified cookies

Encoding:

brotli/2: Returns Brotli-encoded data
deflate/2: Returns Deflate-encoded data
gzip/2: Returns GZip-encoded data
encoding_utf8/2: Returns UTF-8 encoded text

Caching:

cache/2: Tests caching headers
cache_control/2: Sets Cache-Control header with specified max-age
etag/2: Tests ETag functionality

Each function or group of functions corresponds to different features or test scenarios for HTTP requests and responses.

Usage

To use HTTPlex, send HTTP requests to the appropriate endpoints. The service will respond with JSON data (in most cases) containing the requested information or performing the specified action.

For example:

GET /ip will return your IP address.
POST /post with some data will echo back information about your POST request.
GET /status/404 will respond with a 404 status code.

This service is particularly useful for testing HTTP clients, debugging web applications, and understanding how different types of HTTP requests are structured and processed.

Running it

To start your Phoenix server:

Run mix setup to install and setup dependencies
Start Phoenix endpoint with mix phx.server or inside IEx with iex -S mix phx.server

Now you can visit localhost:4000 from your browser.

Ready to run in production? Please check Phoenix deployment guides.

License

The theme is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/abhinavs/httplex.

Other Projects

If you like HTTPlex, do check out my other projects

soopr - a tool that supports you in content marketing
ping - monitor your websites's uptime
annexr - chat based search for your website.
apicagent - a FREE API that extracts device details from user-agent string
cookie - an open source landing website with supporting pages and integrated blog

✨⚡You can read more about me on my blog or follow me on Twitter - @abhinav

Updated: 3 July 2025

License

abhinavs/httplex

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