HTTP
The HTTP action performs HTTP requests. It is commonly used to invoke third-party APIs.
All HTTP methods are supported; the results of HTTP requests may be reused by a task via mechanic/actions/perform.
When developing task code, verify your HTTP action's behavior with webhook.site (making sure not to share sensitive information with this service).
Option | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
method | String, required | Must be one of "get", "post", "put", "patch", or "delete" |
url | String, required | Must start with https:// or http:// |
body | String, required for non-GET requests | Format varies, see below |
files | Hash, optional | |
headers | Hash, optional | May be set to a JSON object, mapping header names to header values |
follow_redirects | Boolean, optional | Defaults to true, may be set to false; controls whether or not 3xx responses with Location headers are automatically followed to their destination |
proxy | String, optional | May be a proxy URI string beginning with https://, http://, or socks5://; see "Using a proxy" below |
verify | Boolean, optional | May be set to false to disable SSL certificate verification |
error_on_5xx | Boolean, optional | May be set to true to have 5xx HTTP response codes be considered action errors |
The HTTP action has intelligently varying behavior, based on the presence and value of the Content-Type header, and the data type of the
body option.If the Content-Type header is unspecified or set to
application/json, and if the body option is set to a JSON object or array, the request body will be automatically serialized to a JSON string, and the request will contain a Content-Type header set to application/json.If the
files option is given, its contents will be evaluated for file generators, and the results will be used to construct a multipart/form-data upload request, combining generated files with any key-value pairs found in the body option.{% action "http" %}
{
"method": "post",
"url": "https://postman-echo.com/post",
"body": {
"hello": "world"
},
"files": {
"robots.txt": {
"url": "https://www.shopify.com/robots.txt"
}
}
}
{% endaction %}
If the
files option is not given, and if the Content-Type header is set to application/x-www-form-urlencoded, and if the body option is set to a JSON object or array, the request body will be serialized to a form-encoded string.To authenticate a request using the Authorization header and the "Basic" authentication type, use something like this:
{% assign username = "guest" %}
{% assign password = "guest" %}
{% assign authorization_header = username | append: ":" | append: password | base64 | prepend: "Basic " %}
{% action "http" %}
{
"method": "get",
"url": "https://jigsaw.w3.org/HTTP/Basic/",
"headers": {
"Authorization": {{ authorization_header | json }}
}
}
{% endaction %}
The HTTP action supports HTTPS, HTTP, and SOCKS5 proxy connections via the
"proxy" option, set to a URI string beginning with https://, http://, or socks5://. When configured, Mechanic will open a connection to your proxy server, and pass your request through that connection.Example HTTP action using a proxy
{% action "http" %}
{
"method": "get",
"url": "https://api.ipify.org?format=json",
"proxy": "socks5://user:[email protected]:port"
}
{% endaction %}
We recommend using an HTTPS proxy server (rather than HTTP or SOCKS5) for a secure connection between Mechanic and your proxy. QuotaGuard Shield is a good option for this kind of service.
Mechanic does not use static IP addresses for outbound requests. Using a connection proxy for your HTTP actions can allow you to control the client IP address of your API requests, for API vendors that require fixed IPs.
This action returns an object containing the following keys:
File property | Description |
status | An integer, specifying the response code |
headers | An object containing response headers, where each key is a string and each value is an array of values found for that header |
body | The interpreted value of the response body; see below |
body_base64 | The original response body, encoded using base64 |
Because HTTP allows for the same header name to be present multiple times, this action's result specifies an array for each response header – even if the header was only present once.
To retrieve a specific header in a task responding to mechanic/actions/perform, use something like this:
{% log response_type_header: action.run.result.headers['content-type'][0] %}
If the response contained a Content-Type header set to
application/json, the body result value will be the result of parsing the response body for JSON.For all other cases, the
body result value will be an UTF8 string, regardless of the response body's original encoding. To access the response body in its original encoding, use the body_base64 result value, passing it through the decode_base64 Liquid filter if necessary.By default, this action will consider any valid HTTP response to be a success, regardless of its response code.
However, because 5xx responses should often be considered a retryable error, this action supports the
error_on_5xx option. When set to true, this action will interpret any 5xx responses as an action error.This task prompts the user for text input, and submits it to a public API that returns everything submitted to it. The task then re-invokes itself, using the Echo action to display the response status, content type, and body.
Subscriptions
Code
mechanic/user/text
mechanic/actions/perform
{% if event.topic == "mechanic/user/text" %}
{% action "http" %}
{
"method": "post",
"url": "https://postman-echo.com/post",
"body": {{ event.data | json }}
}
{% endaction %}
{% else %}
{% action "echo",
response_status: action.run.result.status,
response_content_type: action.run.result.headers['content-type'][0],
response_body: action.run.result.body %}
{% endif %}
Last modified 14d ago