Request Baskets
A web service to collect and inspect arbitrary HTTP requests via RESTful API or web UI, useful for testing webhooks and REST clients.
What is Request Baskets?
Request Baskets is a web service that collects arbitrary HTTP requests for inspection and testing. It solves the problem of debugging webhooks, notifications, and REST clients by providing a centralized place to capture and analyze incoming traffic. Users can create 'baskets' to receive requests and view them via a web UI or RESTful API.
Developers and QA engineers who need to test webhooks, mock API endpoints, or debug HTTP traffic from external services. It's particularly useful for those working with integrations, notifications, or client-server communication.
Developers choose Request Baskets for its self-hosted capability, giving full control over data, along with flexible storage options and a comprehensive API. It's a direct open-source alternative to services like RequestBin, with added features like token-based security and configurable responses.
Overview
HTTP requests collector to test webhooks, notifications, REST clients and more ...
Use Cases
Best For
- Testing webhook endpoints from third-party services
- Debugging REST API clients by inspecting outgoing requests
- Mocking API responses for development and staging environments
- Capturing and analyzing HTTP traffic for security testing
- Creating temporary endpoints for integration testing
- Simulating server responses for frontend development
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring a fully managed, zero-setup hosted service like RequestBin for quick ad-hoc testing
- Applications needing real-time protocol support beyond HTTP (e.g., WebSockets or gRPC) for traffic inspection
- Large-scale production environments expecting automatic load balancing and high availability out-of-the-box, as scaling requires manual database and server management
- Teams needing extensive built-in analytics or long-term archival of captured requests without custom integration
Pros & Cons
Pros
Supports in-memory for speed, Bolt DB for persistence, and SQL databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL) for scalability, allowing users to choose based on their needs for performance, data retention, and shared access.
Provides a full API with interactive OpenAPI documentation for managing baskets, configuring responses, and retrieving requests, enabling automation and integration into development workflows.
Each basket is protected by a unique token for management access, while public endpoints remain open, balancing security with ease of use for request collection.
Emphasizes privacy and ownership by allowing self-hosting, so sensitive debug data stays within your infrastructure, unlike cloud-based alternatives.
Cons
The default in-memory storage loses all data on service restart, which can be a critical flaw for debugging sessions unless users explicitly configure persistent options like Bolt DB or SQL.
Only PostgreSQL and MySQL are officially supported for SQL storage, lacking drivers for other popular databases like SQLite or MongoDB without custom implementation.
Using persistent storage or SQL backends requires additional configuration and database setup, which adds complexity compared to drop-in hosted services.
The web interface offers only three CSS themes (standard, adaptive, flatly) and lacks advanced features like request filtering or real-time updates, making it less polished for extensive use.
Open Source Alternative To
Request Baskets is an open-source alternative to the following products:
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
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