Send a request to localhost from your browser

Test an API on your own machine or network with the {{brand}} browser extension.

In short

{{brand}} sends requests from its own servers, which cannot reach your laptop or office network. A request to localhost or a private address is recorded as "Not sent" - not a failure. "Send from my browser" sends it from your own browser through the {{brand}} extension instead.

Before you start

• Who: signed in, with Run on the project (or a quick request). The extension must be installed in your browser.
• Plan: a Browser run never counts against your plan.
• First: install the browser extension (see /help/settings/browser-extension).

Steps

1. Install the {{brand}} browser extension. The first press of "Send from my browser" offers it if it is missing.
2. Press "Send from my browser" under the Not sent message.
3. The first time for each address, click the extension's icon and approve that host. Then press "Send from my browser" again.

Result: the answer comes back to the page and is recorded as a Browser run. Secrets and personal data are masked, your saved checks judge it, and it never counts against your plan.

Good to know

• Addresses that are not sent: localhost, private network addresses, and names such as .local or .internal. Not sent never turns a request red.
• You have four ways on. One is "Send from my browser". Another is "Send through my agent" (/help/api-testing/cli-agent). The others are "Copy as cURL", and "Use a public URL", which points the request at a public copy of your API.
• A Browser run is your browser's word. It does not change a request's passed or failed state on boards, Home or verification, and is never evidence that {{brand}} tested the API.
• {{brand}} refuses to record a run for a public address as a Browser run - use Send for those.

Secrets stay on the server

Before your browser sends anything, {{brand}} fills in the request's variables the way a normal run does. A secret's value never leaves the server except in a request the server sends itself, so the page has only a mask for it.

• If the address, a header or the body uses a secret variable, nothing is sent. The message names the variable, such as {{token}}. Send it from {{brand}} instead, or use a variable that is not secret for your local copy.
• A variable nothing defines, or one that only gets its value while {{brand}} runs the request, is never sent as literal text either.
• Copy as cURL writes the request with its placeholders, so fill them in yourself.

If something goes wrong

• Nothing happens after "Send from my browser": approve the host in the extension's icon, then press it again.
• "Only a request to a local or private address is sent from your browser; this one goes through" {{brand}}: press Send instead.
• The message names a secret variable: nothing is sent while the request uses one.

Related

• /help/api-testing/cli-agent
• /help/settings/browser-extension
• /help/api-testing/variables