Installation

First you need to make sure that RIF is properly installed. Follow the instructions on the installation page before completing this guide.

Making Your First Request

To get started, we will be making a simple GET request to httpbin.org/get. This endpoint returns the details of GET requests back to the client as JSON.

We will be passing in a URL parameter called message that is parameterised using RIFs variable templating feature.

Open your editor of choice and save the following file to your computer as gethttpbin.rif:

rif_version: 0
url: "http://httpbin.org/get?message=hello%20$(place)"
method: "GET"
variables:
  place:
    type: "string"
    default: "world"

Next, open your terminal in the same location and run RIF, passing in the file you just created:

$ rif ./gethttpbin.rif

If all goes well you should see something like the following:

{
  "args": {
    "message": "hello world"
  }, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip", 
    "Connection": "close", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "RIF/0.2.0"
  }, 
  "origin": "<YOUR IP ADDRESS>", 
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/get?message=hello world"
}

Variable Templating

Now let’s use RIF’s variable templating feature to override our welcome message. Paste the following command into your terminal:

$ rif ./gethttpbin.rif place=universe

You should now see that the response has changed:

{
  "args": {
    "message": "hello universe"
  }, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip", 
    "Connection": "close", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "RIF/0.2.0"
  }, 
  "origin": "<YOUR IP ADDRESS>", 
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/get?message=hello universe"
}

Congratulations! You have just made and executed your first .rif file!

Where next?

Why not check out the RIF File Format documentation?