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Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

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Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#111

Post by jknutson »

Love the idea. I’m always finding myself writing little user scripts / browser extensions to extend websites I use all the time, and trying to use an API I found in the devtools network requests page always gets annoying when I have to try and do anything beyond replicating the exact input/output I found in the original request.

Haven’t fully looked through the features/docs, so forgive me if my question is answered in there, but what does support look like for:

- Exporting to Swagger/OpenAPI Spec

- Exporting to generated SDK (I know some tools exist that can generate SDKs from OpenAPI/Swagger, so maybe some of these tools have licenses that are compatible with your product?)

- Support for URL path variables (e.g. `/users/{user_id}`)

- Support for URL query parameters (and filtering for common “noise” parameters, e.g. Google analytics)

- Support for non-JSON input/output (e.g. an endpoint that accepts multipart form data)

Awesome idea though. I’m definitely going to try this out. Beautiful UI and website too. I’m stoked to play around with this!

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#112

Post by arshxyz »

sumedh wrote: post #108
arshxyz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able repackage it for macOS. I can help you test it too. Shot you an email at contact@apiparrot.com

How were you able to do without the source code?

I extracted the zip, found the electron build folder, replaced a string in the minified code to launch Chrome on macOS correctly and ran electron-packager with the target being macos.

Patching electron apps is fairly common. You can take a look at Spicetify or BetterDiscord to see the process in more detail

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#113

Post by sumedh »

arshxyz wrote: post #112
sumedh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How were you able to do without the source code?

I extracted the zip, found the electron build folder, replaced a string in the minified code to launch Chrome on macOS correctly and ran electron-packager with the target being macos. Patching electron apps is fairly common. You can take a look at Spicetify or BetterDiscord to see the process in more detail

Oh wow, didn't know that was possible. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#114

Post by pvarghav »

jknutson wrote: post #111

Love the idea. I’m always finding myself writing little user scripts / browser extensions to extend websites I use all the time, and trying to use an API I found in the devtools network requests page always gets annoying when I have to try and do anything beyond replicating the exact input/output I found in the original request. Haven’t fully looked through the features/docs, so forgive me if my question is answered…

I'm glad you like the idea! Let me answer your questions one by one:

- Exporting to Swagger/OpenAPI Spec: Currently, exporting to Swagger/OpenAPI isn't supported, but it's on my to-do list to look into. Right now, JavaScript code is the only export format.

- Exporting to a Generated SDK: Same as above. I'm considering integrating tools that can generate SDKs from OpenAPI/Swagger specs, so this might be included in a future update.

- Support for URL Path Variables (e.g., `/users/{user_id}`): Yes, API Parrot supports URL path variables!

- Support for URL Query Parameters (and filtering out common "noise" parameters like Google Analytics): Yes, API Parrot supports URL query parameters, and there are measures in place to filter out the noise.

- Support for Non-JSON Input/Output (e.g., endpoints that accept multipart form data): There is support for non-JSON input/output formats, but multipart form data isn't supported at this time. You can find all the supported data types on this page: https://docs.apiparrot.com/docs/tutorial-extras/exchange-mod...

Thanks again for your support! I'm excited for you to try it out, and I'd love to hear your feedback after you've had a chance to play around with it.

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#115

Post by pvarghav »

sebmellen wrote: post #69

This is incredible. We’ve spent ages and ages figuring out the weird internals of certain legacy systems that we’ve ended up having to use bots or RPA to integrate with. If you can polish this into a true product, we would pay for it! Any chance of a Mac version?

Thanks! I'm glad you like the idea—it sounds like you've had the same struggles I've been through.

Good news: the Mac version is now available to download at https://apiparrot.com/#download.

Let me know if you have any feedback!

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#116

Post by pvarghav »

speakspokespok wrote: post #79

I've just gone through the "Docs" section and I appreciate how it covers the intended workflow and use cases. I'm on Debian/Intel and other than the need to install Chrome I only had a few small issues. ++ A self contained appImage is a good way to go, but where do you put it? A default install location should be added for those used to an `apt install`. I went `sudo wget $URL -C /usr/local/bin/` and `chmod +x $appim…

I'm glad to hear that you like the product and found the tutorial helpful. I've updated the documentation to include instructions for installing the AppImage—thanks for bringing that to my attention.

I really appreciate your detailed feedback on the UI and usability. I'll definitely take your suggestions into consideration and work on implementing them in future versions.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts!

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#117

Post by alp1n3_eth »

sverhagen wrote: post #88
gempir wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the unreasonable hostility towards macOS will have zero affect because in the end the best product wins. Did the rise of Windows cause long term harm to past generation of engineers? I doubt it since now Windows, which had a gigantic market share, still was forced to implement Linux "compatibility" for developers. There are three popular operating systems for the modern developer and it's not unreasonable to ask…

The rise of a MacOS sort of monoculture certainly affected those developers that were still on Windows. It drove me off of Windows, a system that I otherwise appreciated just fine. I never cared much for MacOS, though, so I went to Linux, but there I'm also constantly feeling the pain of so many developers being on MacOS, as there's so many incompatibilities between the two. So, in the end I guess I prefer things tha…

I think it's a little much to expect most small outfits to user test on every single Linux distro though. There are tons of programs that may run fine on something like stock Ubuntu, but bring it to another flavor and all of a sudden nothing works.

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#118

Post by alp1n3_eth »

rorroe53 wrote: post #44
bearjaws wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always amazing to me people who will chastise people for using Macs. It is by far the most robust hardware and 15 years later Windows laptops may finally be catching up. My first programming job was LAMP so I had a Linux desktop and loved it. Later I got a new job that gave us laptops, but they were quite beefy. I had a Dell laptop with an Nvidia GPU and an Intel iGPU... After updating my OS my gpu was the only…

Macbooks have been nice since M1 era, but the Intel Macbooks between years 2013-2020 were hardly robust. My partner's 2014 MBP Retina's screen plastic film started peeling off, which was a known design flaw of those models. Later the ones with butterfly keyboard were notoriously unreliable, with keys getting stuck. Personally I haven't had much trouble with Linux on modern Thinkpads. Very little to configure manually…

Every company can have its issues, I think it's more about how many issues there are and what the company did to address it.

My 2013 4GB RAM MacBook Air is still running great, and is used for browsing in my household. Currently writing this on an M1 Air that is phenomenal as well.

Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

#120

Post by 4k1l »

pvarghav wrote: post #37
davide_v wrote: post #5

Nice, I was looking for something like this. I tried it on Ubuntu but after clicking Capture requests > Launch Chrome, nothing happens.

Thank you for pointing this out. I've addressed the issue, and it should now be fixed in version 0.2.1, which is available for download on the website. Please update to the latest version, and let me know if you encounter any more problems.

This problem persist on version 0.2.3
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