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21-Jun-2025 ~ 3 min read

Hurl Tutorial

How to Use Hurl: A Practical Guide for Developers and Testers

Hurl is a powerful command line tool for making HTTP requests and validating responses using a simple, human readable plain text format. It’s ideal for API testing, scripting, and automating HTTP interactions.

In this guide, you’ll learn what Hurl is, how to install it, and how to write and execute Hurl scripts for various use cases.

When to Use Hurl

When you are shuffling between different tools like curl, Postman, and pytest, Hurl should be used.

Table of Contents

🔧 What is Hurl?

Hurl is a tool that allows you to:

  • Send HTTP requests (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.)

  • Define expected responses with assertions (status code, headers, body content)

  • Use variables and capture values from responses

  • Chain multiple requests in a single test scenario

It’s like a mix between curl, Postman, and pytest but with the simplicity of plain text.

🚀 Installation

You can install Hurl on most platforms:

On macOS (via Homebrew):

brew install hurl

On Linux (Debian/Ubuntu):

curl -sSL https://hurl.dev/install.sh | bash

On Windows:

Download the executable from the Hurl releases page and add it to your PATH.

📄 Writing a Hurl Script

A Hurl script is a .hurl file that defines a sequence of HTTP requests and their expected results.

Example: Simple GET Request

GET https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1
HTTP/1.1 200
[Asserts]
jsonpath "$.id" == 1
jsonpath "$.userId" == 1

This script:

  • Sends a GET request

  • Expects HTTP 200 OK

  • Validates JSON fields using JSONPath expressions

✍️ Features & Syntax

1. Sending POST Requests

POST https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts
[Headers]
Content-Type: application/json

[Body]
{
"title": "foo",
"body": "bar",
"userId": 1
}

HTTP/1.1 201
jsonpath "$.title" == "foo"

2. Capturing Values

GET https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1
HTTP/1.1 200
[Captures]
jsonpath "$.userId" => user_id

You can then reuse {{user_id}} in later requests.

3. Using Variables

You can pass variables from the CLI:

hurl test.hurl --variable name=John

And in your script:

GET https://example.com/hello?name={{name}}

✅ Running a Hurl Script

To run your .hurl test:

hurl mytest.hurl

Add the --verbose flag for detailed output:

hurl mytest.hurl --verbose

Or run multiple tests in a directory:

hurl tests/*.hurl

🧪 Test Automation Use Cases

Hurl is great for:

  • Smoke testing APIs
  • Validating HTTP endpoints in CI pipelines
  • Replacing Postman collections with text-based tests
  • Quick manual checks of services via terminal

🔍 Debugging Tips

Use --verbose or --very-verbose for debugging HTTP headers and body

Use --insecure for skipping SSL checks (e.g., for localhost testing)

Use environment variables and .env files for secrets

📚 More Resources