http.hx

A currently minimal HTTP client plugin for the Helix editor, based on the Visual Studio Code REST client syntax.

Parses the request into a curl command and runs that via shell, parsing the response to Markdown with appropriate injections.

I’ve only tested this on macOS. Linux should be no different, but I’ve no idea what it will do on Windows.

Currently you’ll need mattwparas’s steel-event-system Helix fork⁠ to use this, and may want to check out his helix-config⁠ repo to see how to set up key bindings, etc.

Demo

Status

This is a work in progress, experimental plugin for a work in progress, experimental plugin system. It’s barely been tested. I wouldn’t necessarily advise firing HTTP requests at your production environment with this.

Features

• Execute HTTP requests from .http files using vscode-restclient syntax
• Variable substitution with @variable = value declarations
• Persistent scratch buffer with Markdown formatting
• Syntax highlighting for response bodies (JSON, XML, HTML, etc.)
• Configurable timeout, split orientation, and header inclusion
• Support for multiple selections and batch execution

Installation

You need to be running Helix with the experimental Steel plugin system. You’ll need curl installed and in your PATH.

Install with forge⁠, Steel’s package manager. This pulls in the http2curl⁠ dependency automatically:

forge pkg install --git https://github.com/waddie/http.hx

Then load the plugin in Helix (e.g. add to init.scm, see below for an example):

(require "http.hx/http-client.scm")

Helix doesn’t ship with the http grammar by default. I built and installed the grammar and highlight.scm queries from tree-sitter-http⁠, then added this to my languages.toml:

[[language]]
name = "http"
scope = "source.http"
injection-regex = "(http)"
file-types = ["http"]
comment-token = "--"
indent = { tab-width = 2, unit = " " }

You might also want ./runtime/queries/http/textobjects.scm from this repo. The main useful thing it adds is match/around/function support, which makes it easy to select an entire request (URL + headers + body) in one motion for execution.

Usage

Basic Example

Create a .http file:

# Simple GET request
GET https://httpbin.io/get

###

# POST with JSON body
POST https://httpbin.io/post
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "name": "http.hx",
  "version": "1.0"
}

Select a request and run :http-exec-selection to execute. Results appear in the *http* scratch buffer.

Note that when I say “select”, I really mean “select” the whole thing. It won’t work/do what you expect with your cursor somewhere in the request, like it would with similar plugins in other editors. I think this is in keeping with Helix’s selection-action model.

Variable Substitution

@baseUrl = https://api.example.com
@token = your-api-token

GET {{baseUrl}}/users
Authorization: Bearer {{token}}

Commands

• :http-exec-selection - Execute HTTP request in primary selection
• :http-exec-multiple-selections - Execute all selected requests
• :http-exec-buffer - Execute all requests in buffer
• :http-set-timeout [seconds] - Set/show execution timeout (default: 30)
• :http-set-orientation [vsplit|hsplit] - Set/show split direction (default: vsplit)
• :http-toggle-headers - Toggle response header inclusion (default: true)

init.scm

A minimal init.scm enabling this plugin, with key bindings, might look something like the below:

(require "cogs/keymaps.scm")
(require (prefix-in helix. "helix/commands.scm"))
(require (prefix-in helix.static. "helix/static.scm"))
(require "helix/configuration.scm")

(require "http.hx/http-client.scm")

(keymap (global)
        (normal (space (H (c ":http-exec-selection")
                          (m ":http-exec-multiple-selections")
                          (b ":http-exec-buffer"))))
        (select (space (H (c ":http-exec-selection")
                          (m ":http-exec-multiple-selections")
                          (b ":http-exec-buffer")))))

Test Files

See test/ directory for example .http files demonstrating various features.

LLM disclosure

I used Claude Code a bit to spin this up. It’s absolutely bloody terrible at Scheme, but be aware that not all of this code was written by humans, although one did read it.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.