How to manually send HTTP POST requests from Firefox or Chrome browser

I want to test some URLs in a web application I'm working on. For that I would like to manually create HTTP POST requests (meaning I can add whatever parameters I like). Is there any functionality in Chrome and/or Firefox that I'm missing?

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges asked Jan 25, 2011 at 18:45 Pascal Klein Pascal Klein 24.6k 24 24 gold badges 83 83 silver badges 120 120 bronze badges

Make an AJAX call in the Chrome console. No extension needed. This is a good way to make POST requests without the need to grab authentication cookies. $.post('/resource/path/')

Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 16:51

Whilst an add on is necessary, the close is niitpicking nonsense. He was asking for functionality in chrome or firefox , or iif it needs a plugin. That it might require a specifed or unspecified plugin is not the point

Commented Jun 16, 2017 at 7:48

The post is closed incorrectly. It does not ask for a tool, but for a functionality in the tools the author already is working with. This way we have to close all questions about how to do this or that on some tool - and it will be a good on-tenth of SO.

Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 15:22

I noticed this feature on Firefox when you open the network tab and choose a random request you can Edit and Resend it which is pretty cool.

Commented Mar 26, 2018 at 13:01

In modern browsers you can make use of the Fetch API which lets you do a POST request from the JavaScript developer console with minimal effort. I am prefering this because you don't need to install a third party extension and especially when posting sensitive data (like passwords) it's recommended to NOT rely on external software. Here is a code snippet how to use the Fetch API: gist.github.com/bennyn/ed95ed9edd6ce0d04e7c8d6e6eb1a1f8

Commented Feb 18, 2019 at 23:21

19 Answers 19

I have been making a Chrome app called Postman for this type of stuff. All the other extensions seemed a bit dated so made my own. It also has a bunch of other features which have been helpful for documenting our own API here.

Postman now also has native apps (i.e. standalone) for Windows, Mac and Linux! It is more preferable now to use native apps, read more here.

11.2k 3 3 gold badges 29 29 silver badges 59 59 bronze badges answered Mar 15, 2012 at 8:32 39.6k 9 9 gold badges 43 43 silver badges 49 49 bronze badges

Make sure to install Postman interceptor plugin too if you want to use your browser's cookies, session.

Commented Feb 1, 2018 at 20:04

Tool might be useful, but a 3rd party app doesn't answer the question, which asks for doing this through Chrome or Firefox.

Commented Jul 7, 2021 at 11:30

Unfortunately, the Postman app uses a huge chunk of your RAM when IDLE. That's a shame when you just need a lightweight app to send basic HTTP request, with eventually some auth. It is a great app with good ergonomy though.

Commented Sep 16, 2021 at 15:16 Wait. This post is sacred 🤯 Commented Dec 20, 2021 at 17:00 And Postman as we know was born. Commented Jul 3, 2022 at 19:09

CURL is awesome to do what you want! It's a simple, but effective, command line tool.

REST implementation test commands:

curl -i -X GET http://rest-api.io/items curl -i -X GET http://rest-api.io/items/5069b47aa892630aae059584 curl -i -X DELETE http://rest-api.io/items/5069b47aa892630aae059584 curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '' http://rest-api.io/items curl -i -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '' http://rest-api.io/items/5069b47aa892630aae059584
31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jun 1, 2013 at 7:54 9,289 9 9 gold badges 38 38 silver badges 56 56 bronze badges

I'm upvoting this even though it's a wrong answer to the question: it's what I needed to know instead.

Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 17:11

It doesn't fit the whole purpose, because it cannot attach cookies already set in a browser. For example, you might want to log in to a website manually, and then send a post request. With curl, this would be a huge pain if the login process is handled with javascript stuff

Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:18

This doesn't work for me, I can't use single quotes on OSX with zsh and bash, shell is turning into quote> mode. I need to use -d " Commented Mar 3, 2020 at 15:32

Yeah, curl is awesome, you almost always already have it on Unix, and it's really lightweight for Windows. No registration or SMS! ;)

Commented Oct 4, 2020 at 5:48

Windows cmd.exe also doesn't like the single quotes, so for my POST I used: curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "" localhost:60524

Commented Oct 27, 2021 at 16:24

Firefox

Open Network panel in Developer Tools by pressing Ctrl+Shift+E or by going Menubar -> Tools -> Web Developer -> Network. Select a row corresponding to a request.

Newer versions

Look for a resend button in the far right. Then a new editing form would open in the left. Edit it.

Older versions

Then Click on small door icon on top-right (in expanded form in the screenshot, you'll find it just left of the highlighted Headers), second row (if you don't see it then reload the page) -> Edit and resend whatever request you want

Firefox Dev Tools with button

POST request body highlighted

answered Nov 10, 2014 at 16:23 8,551 10 10 gold badges 47 47 silver badges 64 64 bronze badges

Is this feature broken for anyone else? When editing the parameters in the "Query String" box, after altering a single character, it refuses to alter the request any further. The only way to do it beyond that is to edit the entire URL/request (which is difficult because it's all smooshed together)

Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 21:03 this does not work in the current version of Chrome Commented May 16, 2021 at 18:30

@dima-lituiev, The screenshots above are for Firefox and I've confirmed it works in firefox version 88.0.1

Commented May 21, 2021 at 15:15

I've also confirmed it works in Firefox 88.0.1 - However, in my case, the "Edit and Resend" button is not showing up. I have to right-click on the request then click "Open in Network Panel". From there, I am able to click the "Resend" dropdown in the upper right and select "Edit and Resend". Kudos to this solution going strong years later. You even have an option for it to create a fetch() command for the request to use in the console like OP was initially requesting.

Commented May 24, 2021 at 22:31

In the latest version of Firefox, only "Resend" is there instead of "Edit & Resend". I took 5 mins to figure it out that there is no other button to EDIT it.

Commented Dec 12, 2022 at 12:06

Forget the browser and try CLI. HTTPie is a great tool!

HTTPie screenshot

CLI HTTP clients:

If you insist on a browser extension then:

Chrome:

Firefox:

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Feb 9, 2012 at 15:43 16.6k 7 7 gold badges 51 51 silver badges 47 47 bronze badges also resource test addon addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/http-resource-test Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 4:58 Poster last updated 28/06/11 - updates to Firefox means there's no way to launch it Commented Aug 27, 2014 at 11:17

@akostadinov i am unable to use resource test addon in mozilla the tool does not appear (even after installaion and restart) to me under developer tools in the lastest version of firefox.

Commented Sep 18, 2014 at 7:23

Just tried REST Easy. Uninstalled on the spot: the interface does way too much hand-holding and forces the user into rigid use cases. Not good for API development.

Commented Jul 9, 2015 at 11:20 I would rather use curlie than HTTPie. curlie is based on the more powerful curl . Commented May 17, 2021 at 13:35

Having been greatly inspired by Postman for Chrome, I decided to write something similar for Firefox.

REST Easy* is a restartless Firefox add-on that aims to provide as much control as possible over requests. The add-on is still in an experimental state (it hasn't even been reviewed by Mozilla yet) but development is progressing nicely.

The project is open source, so if anyone feels compelled to help with development, that would be awesome: https://github.com/nathan-osman/Rest-Easy

* the add-on available from http://addons.mozilla.org will always be slightly behind the code available on GitHub

answered Nov 9, 2013 at 19:53 Nathan Osman Nathan Osman 72.7k 74 74 gold badges 262 262 silver badges 368 368 bronze badges

Seems nice, but lacks the ability to control the request body fully. Currently, it offers key/value abilities, but full control of the post body would be nice.

Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 9:54 PUT and DELETE support would win me over. Looks good otherwise. Commented Oct 15, 2014 at 11:28

@Pacerier: it's a feature I'm currently working on and am about 90% complete. Hopefully it will be released before the end of the year. There does seem to be a backlog getting addons approved by Mozilla.

Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 8:58

After over a month of waiting, the new version has been approved. PUT and DELETE support has arrived! And in that month, I've also made a ton of other new changes that will show up soon in the next release. (Hopefully it gets approved sooner this time.)

Commented Dec 23, 2014 at 19:18

That is not available anymore, as it seems. (It likely is not a WebExtension and thus not compatible with Firefox >= 57.) This problem is tracked here: github.com/nathan-osman/REST-Easy/issues/78

Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 10:25

You specifically asked for "extension or functionality in Chrome and/or Firefox", which the answers you have already received provide, but I do like the simplicity of oezi's answer to the closed question "How can I send a POST request with a web browser?" for simple parameters. oezi says:

With a form, just set method to "post"

I.e., build yourself a very simple page to test the POST actions.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jan 21, 2015 at 10:42 17.3k 27 27 gold badges 127 127 silver badges 283 283 bronze badges

I will add, for the ones that don't know: what you specify as action is the resource you want to get (which can include GET-style query parameters), and value specifies the POST's data body. E.g. action="api/ids?name=John" and value="hello" will make a POST request to /api/ids?name=John with a body of hello .

Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 8:17

I think that Benny Neugebauer's comment on the OP question about the Fetch API should be presented here as an answer since the OP was looking for a functionality in Chrome to manually create HTTP POST requests and that is exactly what the fetch command does.

There is a nice simple example of the Fetch API here:

// Make sure you run it from the domain 'https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/'. (cross-origin-policy) fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts', >) .then(response => response.json()) .then(json => console.log(json))

Some of the advantages of the fetch command are really precious: It's simple, short, fast, available and even as a console command it stored on your chrome console and can be used later.

The simplicity of pressing F12 , write the command in the console tab (or press the up key if you used it before) then press Enter , see it pending and returning the response is what making it really useful for simple POST requests tests.

Of course, the main disadvantage here is that, unlike Postman, this won't pass the cross-origin-policy, but still I find it very useful for testing in local environment or other environments where I can enable CORS manually.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Dec 24, 2020 at 19:46 769 9 9 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges

This worked great to get "unstuck" when I had an app that was caught in a bad state that couldn't be cleared because a bug was keeping the UI locked. Got the user going again till the bug could be addressed.

Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 17:37

Exactly like @SteveInCO, I needed a native Chrome method just to get my user (who can't be expected to have anything besides Chrome available) unstuck as an emergency measure. (Even though I use most of the other tools for my own day-to-day use.)

Commented Mar 19, 2021 at 12:08

Here's the Advanced REST Client extension for Chrome.

It works great for me -- do remember that you can still use the debugger with it. The Network pane is particularly useful; it'll give you rendered JSON objects and error pages.

479 6 6 gold badges 12 12 silver badges 27 27 bronze badges answered Jan 23, 2012 at 21:41 4,739 2 2 gold badges 36 36 silver badges 45 45 bronze badges

For Firefox there is also an extension called RESTClient which is quite nice:

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Oct 24, 2012 at 21:25 Johan Falk Johan Falk 4,359 2 2 gold badges 31 31 silver badges 43 43 bronze badges

It may not be directly related to browsers, but Fiddler is another good software.

Fiddler web debugger

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Aug 27, 2015 at 16:17 1,440 15 15 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges

You could also use Watir or WatiN to automate browsers. Watir is written for Ruby and Watin is for .NET languages. I am not sure if it's what you are looking for, though.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jan 25, 2011 at 18:52 3,625 3 3 gold badges 19 19 silver badges 28 28 bronze badges

There have been some other clients born since the rise of Postman that is worth mentioning here:

answered Sep 10, 2020 at 22:01 1,039 1 1 gold badge 17 17 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges

The question being 12 years old now, it is easy to understand why the author asked a solution for Firefox or Chrome back then. After 12 years though, there are also other browsers and the best one which does not involve any add-ons or additional tools is Microsoft Edge.

Just open devtools (F12) and then Network Console tab (not the Network or Console tab. Click on + sign and open it, if it is not visible.).

answered Feb 1, 2023 at 12:49 117 1 1 silver badge 5 5 bronze badges

Try Runscope. A free tool sampling their service is provided at https://www.hurl.it/.

You can set the method, authentication, headers, parameters, and body. The response shows status code, headers, and body. The response body can be formatted from JSON with a collapsable hierarchy.

Paid accounts can automate test API calls and use return data to build new test calls.

COI disclosure: I have no relationship to Runscope.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Apr 2, 2015 at 17:37 Bennett Brown Bennett Brown 5,363 1 1 gold badge 28 28 silver badges 35 35 bronze badges

There is a free tier for Runscope too, it just has a lower limit of request per month and only 1 team member. Disclosure: I do :-)

Commented Apr 2, 2015 at 21:34

Check out http-tool for Firefox.

Aimed at web developers who need to debug HTTP requests and responses. Can be extremely useful while developing REST based API.

31.5k 22 22 gold badges 109 109 silver badges 132 132 bronze badges answered Jul 19, 2014 at 23:42 bobbyrne01 bobbyrne01 6,615 21 21 gold badges 83 83 silver badges 161 161 bronze badges

That is not available anymore, as it seems. (It likely is not a WebExtension and thus not compatible with Firefox >= 57.)

Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 10:24 The link (effectively) broken: "Oops! We can’t find that page" Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 3:48

I tried to use postman app, had some auth issues. If you have to do it exclusively using browser, go to network tab, right click on the call, say edit and send response. There is a similar ans on here about Firefox, this right click worked for me on edge and pretty sure it would work for chrome too

answered Mar 10, 2022 at 18:33 Niraj Motiani Niraj Motiani 71 1 1 silver badge 9 9 bronze badges Option is available in Edge, but not in Chrome. Commented Mar 23, 2023 at 20:52

So it occurs to me that you can use the console, create a function, and just easily send requests from the console, which will have the correct cookies, etc.

// Example POST method implementation: async function postData(url = '', data = <>, options = <>) < // Default options are marked with * let defaultOptions = < method: 'POST', // *GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. mode: 'cors', // no-cors, *cors, same-origin cache: 'no-cache', // *default, no-cache, reload, force-cache, only-if-cached credentials: 'same-origin', // include, *same-origin, omit headers: < 'Content-Type': 'application/json' // 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded', >, redirect: 'follow', // manual, *follow, error referrerPolicy: 'no-referrer', // no-referrer, *no-referrer-when-downgrade, origin, origin-when-cross-origin, same-origin, strict-origin, strict-origin-when-cross-origin, unsafe-url body: JSON.stringify(data) // body data type must match "Content-Type" header > // update the default options with specific options (e.g. < "method": "GET" >) const requestParams = Object.assign(defaultOptions, options); const response = await fetch(url, requestParams); return response.text(); // displays the simplest form of the output in the console. Maybe changed to response.json() if you wish >

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GET REQUESTS, you can just put them in your browser address bar!

if you paste that into your console, then you can make POST requests by repeatedly calling your function like this:

postData('https://example.com/answer', < answer: 42 >) .then(data => < console.log(data); // you might want to use JSON.parse on this >);

and the server output will be printed in the console (as well as all the data available in the network tab)

This function assumes you are sending JSON data. If you are not, you will need to change it to suite your needs