Unirest

Languages and libraries

http client libraries

SHOW HN2013

174points
67comments
#93of 1,739 in 2013
Top 6%of 2013 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

14 positive, 22 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 23 critical, out of 62 comments about the project. Thread score -0.17.

Design: 5 for, 9 againstExecution: 1 for, 10 againstIdea: 6 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Clean, simple, consistent syntax across languages

    From 3 comments
    • Thanks for this. I'm already using Unirest.php to build a client library for my API and Unirest.rb is my obvious choice when I come to build the Ruby client lib. As aroman said,…
      joshguthrie on HN
    • I actually used unirest.rb as one of the tools to teach my students about HTTP requests. I loved the clear syntax and found the experience a lot more straight-forward than many…
      zampano on HN
    • Heh, platform-independence...I guess that's one way to get them to use your HTTP library, as opposed to the thousand other libs out there to do HTTP. ;) But I like it! In all…
      tomphoolery on HN
  • Useful for learning and teaching HTTP

    From 2 comments
    • I actually used unirest.rb as one of the tools to teach my students about HTTP requests. I loved the clear syntax and found the experience a lot more straight-forward than many…
      zampano on HN
    • Heh, platform-independence...I guess that's one way to get them to use your HTTP library, as opposed to the thousand other libs out there to do HTTP. ;) But I like it! In all…
      tomphoolery on HN

Objections

  • Inconsistent APIs and naming across language versions

    From 2 comments
    • Looking at the examples for Node and PHP, those are essentially two different request libs with the same name. That lack of consistency is a problem - at the very least anyone…
      onion2k on HN
    • You really need to make an effort to conform with established naming/casing conventions in each language [1]. For example, your example page should read [2] for .Net. [1]:…
      zamalek on HN
  • PHP version is limited compared to Guzzle

    From 2 comments
    • The PHP version seems to be meh... Gotta do a lot to get us away from Guzzle. http://guzzlephp.org/
      Killswitch on HN
    • It's meh because it's meh... The package is limited... I can do more by taking a few minutes to write my own curl wrapper than add this to my composer.json file, composer install…
      Killswitch on HN
  • Unidiomatic code in Objective-C and PHP (SSL verification disabled)

    From 2 comments
    • Yep things like this, lack of class prefix, and using [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:@"application/json", @"accept", nil] instead of modern literal syntax @{"accept":…
      neilkimmett on HN
    • This doesn't seem to be a good idea ``` curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); ``` https://github.com/Mashape/unirest-php/blob/master/lib/Unirest/Unirest.php#L98
      mediumdeviation on HN
  • Native libraries already good enough

    From 2 comments
    • As cool (and pretty) as this is, I'm not sure I see the point to using this over each language's best native http client. As someone else said, Python's requests is fantastic, as…
      aroman on HN
    • Looks nice - but unfortunately as someone whose day-to-day language is python, I'll give up my requests library [1] when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.…
      tfinch on HN

Requests

  • Unity3D / C# support

    From 2 comments
    • If you could implement this for Unity3d using C# I'd be so happy
      hayksaakian on HN
    • The problem with Unity3D is that you're forced into using their WWW class unless you pay for a professional license (on each of the platforms from which you intend to make…
      acron0 on HN
  • Caching and fuller HTTP support

    From 1 comment
    • why not support proper http including caching
      the1 on HN
  • Streaming response support

    From 1 comment
    • If you have any ideas (I have little experience in building libs like this, but will definitely learn): currently I need a streaming JSON decoder (which handles base64-encoded…
      Groxx on HN
  • Bind to specific IP parameter

    From 1 comment

Questions

  • Why choose this over native language HTTP clients?

    From 2 comments
    • As cool (and pretty) as this is, I'm not sure I see the point to using this over each language's best native http client. As someone else said, Python's requests is fantastic, as…
      aroman on HN
    • Looks nice - but unfortunately as someone whose day-to-day language is python, I'll give up my requests library [1] when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.…
      tfinch on HN
  • Does the Node version work in browsers via Browserify?

    From 1 comment
    • Interesting - does the Node version work if packaged for the browser i.e. by Browserify? Of course, there would be caveats, but it would seem like that would be very much in the…
      btown on HN

Alternatives named

  • Python requests

    From 2 comments
    • Looks nice - but unfortunately as someone whose day-to-day language is python, I'll give up my requests library [1] when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.…
      tfinch on HN
    • As cool (and pretty) as this is, I'm not sure I see the point to using this over each language's best native http client. As someone else said, Python's requests is fantastic, as…
      aroman on HN
  • Guzzle (PHP)

    From 1 comment
    • The PHP version seems to be meh... Gotta do a lot to get us away from Guzzle. http://guzzlephp.org/
      Killswitch on HN
  • Node request / superagent

    From 1 comment
    • As cool (and pretty) as this is, I'm not sure I see the point to using this over each language's best native http client. As someone else said, Python's requests is fantastic, as…
      aroman on HN
  • AFNetworking

    From 1 comment
    • Totally agree with giving them the benefit of the doubt, hence https://github.com/Mashape/unirest-obj-c/pull/9 I still doubt as much thought has gone into it as a more mature…
      neilkimmett on HN
  • PHP Requests

    From 1 comment

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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