Using cached responses

hit caches responses from each request execution and elements of the response can be used to construct new requests using request templates. In this guide, we will go through some examples of how to use hit’s cache to construct requests.

Referencing cache in the template #

Let’s start with a basic example:

echo '
@_global
base_url=https://nodes.yolo42.com
version=1


@gen-root-node
POST
/v1/node
~y2j
title: "root-node"

@create-node
POST
/v1/node
~hy2j
title: "child-node"
parent_id: "@gen-root-node.id"
' > quick-start.hit

In this example, there are two requests:

• @gen-root-node has a static YAML body. There is nothing special about it.
• @create-node is a request template where parent_id refers to id key from the response of @gen-root-node request.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at how this works out.

Create a root node:

hit @gen-root-node

and then create a child node:

hit @create-node

If you observe, you can see that the parent_id of the child node matches with the id of the root node.

In this way, a template can reference response from any other request.

Dynamic cache references #

Even though static cache references can enable a variety of workflows, the real power of cache referencing comes when one combines them with CLI arguments and request templates.

Let’s take an example:

echo '
@_global
base_url=https://nodes.yolo42.com
version=1


@gen-root-node
POST
/v1/node
~y2j
title: root-node


@get-node
GET
/v1/node/@2

@create-node
POST
/v1/node
~hy2j
title: "@2"
parent_id: "@3"
' > quick-start.hit

Let’s create a root node:

hit @gen-root-node

And then, to create a child node:

hit @create-node "child-0" @gen-root-node.id

Did you see what just happened? Variable resolution is happening at two layers:

• The title field in @create-node references @2, a CLI argument.
• The value of @2 above is @gen-root-node.id which resolves to the id field of the response of @gen-root-node request execution.

You can read back the parent node in one of two ways now:

hit @get-node @gen-root-node.id
# or
hit @get-node @create-node.parent_id

Let’s create a couple of grandchild nodes:

hit @create-node "grandchild-0" @create-node.id

And then one more:

hit @create-node "grandchild-1" @create-node.parent_id

Now, let’s read the child-0 node:

hit @get-node @create-node.parent_id

You can combine and reorder request execution in this fashion to accomplish complicated workflows. The possibilities are endless!