This is the easy part.
One of the issues with these tools is that more and more websites now employ multiple aggressive CAPTCHAs, fingerprints, device check, etc, rendering tools like API Parrot almost useless.
Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#22Very sad half the comments are asking for MacOS app. The rise of development on MacOS for server development when the final target is Linux will cause long term harm to the newer generation of engineers
Not sad at all! Mac has excellent hardware, excellent reliability, excellent day to day performance. Im not a fanboy, but it won for (IMHO) clear and obvious reasons. Of course folks want a mac app. No comment on the “harm” bit.
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#23Very sad half the comments are asking for MacOS app. The rise of development on MacOS for server development when the final target is Linux will cause long term harm to the newer generation of engineers
Most people scraping sites aren’t writing anything low-level enough to care about the particular flavor of Unix-like OS it runs on.
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#24can it reverse websocket-protocols ? If so, how does it do binary decoding etc ?
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#25Very sad half the comments are asking for MacOS app. The rise of development on MacOS for server development when the final target is Linux will cause long term harm to the newer generation of engineers
Nowadays everything runs on docker anyway
You'd never see a Windows developer work in MacOS or a iOS developer work in Linux but Linux developers (server side) routinely work in MacOS
Unnecessary abstraction
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#26Impressive project. I was curious how it discovers data relationships and was going to check the repo, but it looks like there's no code, only issues and releases. Is that right? Which leads me to... - Is this closed source? - Does it cost money? - How does it discover data relationships?
Thanks for your interest!
- Is this closed source?
Currently, the code is not open source, but I might open-source parts of it in the future.
- Does it cost money?
The software is free to use. If there is demand, I might create a "pro" version for businesses in the future. However, I intend to always have a free version available for individuals.
- How does it discover data relationships?
I've discussed how it discovers data relationships in the documentation here: https://docs.apiparrot.com/docs/tutorial-extras/exchange-mod....
In short, the tool breaks down the data in the requests and responses into smaller parts by identifying their formats. For example, `["foo", "bar"]` would be recognized as a JSON array and broken down into the elements `"foo"` and `"bar"`. By applying this method recursively, you build a tree-like structure of the data.
If an exact match is found between data in a response from a previous request and data in a subsequent request, a correlation is detected.
Please feel free to ask if you have any more questions!
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#27Very sad half the comments are asking for MacOS app. The rise of development on MacOS for server development when the final target is Linux will cause long term harm to the newer generation of engineers
Why? I mostly code on Mac and deploy on Linux (or FreeBSD). Never really encountered a situation where programming a web app on Mac has caused issues when deploying to the server.
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#28Hi, it seems youve spelled reverse wrong > API Parrot is the tool specifically designed to reverese engineer the HTTP APIs of any website.
Thanks for pointing this out!
It should now be fixed.
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#29Any current plans for a macOS release?
Yes, I plan to release a macOS version of API Parrot. Unfortunately, I currently don't own a Mac, and since building macOS applications requires one, this has delayed the release. I'm actively exploring solutions, such as accessing a Mac environment remotely or acquiring the necessary hardware.
Re: Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs
#30looks amazing! thanks for sharing, will give it a shot in a short while. Btw, how do you keep yourself motivated on working on free projects? Obviosly it takes a lot of effort and no one is paying for that.