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helena 0.9.1 Desktop app · windows · macos · linux · open source · free

bartosz@idct:~/software/helena$ ls examples/

examples

A few representative workflows, captured from the real app running against a local demo API.

Compose and send a request

Pick a method, type a URL (with {{variables}}), fill in a body and hit Send. The response panel pretty-prints JSON with structured folding, search and a raw view, and shows the status, size and timing.

The Helena desktop app: a collection sidebar, a POST request with a JSON body, and the 201 Created response (open full size)
A POST with a JSON body and the 201 Created response.

Authenticate, nine schemes

Open the Auth tab and choose a scheme: Basic, Bearer, API Key, OAuth 2.0 (with auth code and PKCE), OAuth 1.0a, WSSE, AWS SigV4, Digest or NTLM. Credentials can come from {{variables}}, so secrets stay out of the collection YAML. Then check the response in a post-response script:

js
test("profile looks right", function () {
  expect(response.status).toBe(200);
  expect(response.json.role).toBe("admin");
  expect(response.json.tags).toContain("founder");
});
The Helena Auth tab set to Bearer Token, with the token sourced from a variable, and a 200 OK response (open full size)
A Bearer token sourced from {{TOKEN}}: resolved on the wire, never written to disk.

Headers, variables and a structured response

Add request headers (with {{$guid}} and other dynamic values), then read the response back as a folding JSON tree with search.

The Helena Headers tab with an Accept and an X-Request-Id header, and a nested JSON response (open full size)
Request headers including a dynamic {{$guid}}, and a nested JSON response.

Chain requests together

On the Chain tab, name a prior request by its path and give it an alias. Helena runs it before the leaf and binds the result as chain.<alias> for your headers, body and scripts, so you can log in and place an order in a single Send: no copy-paste and no juggling tokens by hand. Reference the chained response anywhere a {{variable}} works:

http
Authorization: Bearer {{chain.auth.response.json.token}}

Or reach it from a script:

js
// Pull a value out of an earlier request's response
const token = chain.auth.response.json.token;

// Or stash it from the login's own post-response script
helena.env.set("TOKEN", response.json.token); // -> {{TOKEN}} anywhere
Helena's Chain tab: a Place order request that runs Auth/Login first (aliased auth), with the 201 Created order response (open full size)
"Place order" runs "Auth/Login" first (aliased auth) and comes back 201 Created.

Stream a WebSocket feed

Enter a wss:// URL and press Send: Helena opens a live session. Type messages to send; received messages stream into the transcript. Pings are answered automatically and fragmented messages are reassembled. Server-Sent Events have their own control: point at a text/event-stream endpoint and press Stream (SSE), and events append live into the response view.

Run a collection in CI

Run the whole collection headlessly, with the same resolution, scripts and assertions as the app, and gate your pipeline on the exit code:

sh
helena run ./collections/acme --env Staging
# exits non-zero if any request errors or any check fails

# machine-readable output for CI dashboards:
helena run ./collections/acme --format junit > report.xml
helena run ./collections/acme --format json  > report.json
text
ok    Users/Get user               GET    200  3ms
ok    Users/Create user            POST   201  5ms
        PASS  profile looks right
2 requests, 1 checks passed, 0 failed

The screenshots on this page are real captures of the app against a local demo API; make screenshots in the repository regenerates them.

$ helena --download

Try Helena.

Free and open source, for Windows, macOS and Linux. One binary of about 35 MB: no installer, no account and no cloud.

$ helena --downloadgithub ↗