httpx2

Command-line HTTP client from the HTTPX2 Python library

TLDR

GET a URL and print a highlighted response body

$ httpx2 [https://example.com]

POST JSON (method becomes POST when a body is given)

$ httpx2 [https://api.example.com/items] -j ['{"name":"ada"}']

Send form fields

$ httpx2 [https://example.com/login] -d [username] [ada] -d [password] [s3cret]

Add a header (name and value are two arguments)

$ httpx2 [https://api.example.com] -h [Authorization] [Bearer token]

Follow redirects and show the request as well as the response

$ httpx2 [https://example.com] --follow-redirects -v

Download the body to a file

$ httpx2 [https://example.com/file.bin] --download [file.bin]

Use HTTP/2 if the server supports it (needs the http2 extra)

$ httpx2 [https://example.com] --http2

httpx2 is the optional command-line client shipped with HTTPX2, Pydantic's maintained continuation of the Python httpx library. It is not ProjectDiscovery's httpx probe toolkit (documented as httpx in this library).Install the CLI extra, which pulls in click, rich, and pygments:

$ pip install 'httpx2[cli]'

That registers the console script httpx2. Without [cli], the Python package still installs but the command is not available.The tool sends one HTTP request and prints a syntax-highlighted body (JSON pretty-printed when the content type is JSON). Binary responses print a byte-count placeholder. Exit status is 0 on a successful HTTP status, 1 on a 4xx/5xx response or a transport error.HTTPX2 verifies TLS against the operating-system trust store (via truststore), not the certifi bundle used by classic httpx. In minimal containers, install CA certificates in the OS store or set SSL_CERT_FILE / SSL_CERT_DIR.The same package is a full sync/async Python HTTP client (`import httpx2`). The CLI is a thin wrapper around httpx2.Client.

PARAMETERS

-m METHOD, --method METHOD

HTTP method: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, OPTIONS, HEAD, QUERY. Default GET, or POST if a request body is included.

-p NAME VALUE, --params NAME VALUE

Query parameter. Repeatable.

-c TEXT, --content TEXT

Raw request body.

-d NAME VALUE, --data NAME VALUE

Form field in the request body. Repeatable.

-f NAME FILE, --files NAME FILE

Multipart file field. Repeatable.

-j TEXT, --json TEXT

JSON request body (must be valid JSON).

-h NAME VALUE, --headers NAME VALUE

Extra request header. Repeatable.

--cookies NAME VALUE

Cookie. Repeatable.

--auth USER PASS

HTTP basic auth. Use - as the password to prompt. --verbose prints the Authorization header (reversible encoding).

--proxy URL

Proxy URL for the request.

--timeout FLOAT

Network timeout in seconds (default 5.0).

--follow-redirects

Follow HTTP redirects.

--no-verify

Disable TLS certificate verification.

--http2

Prefer HTTP/2 when the server supports it. Requires pip install 'httpx2[http2]'.

--download FILE

Write the response body to FILE instead of printing it.

-v, --verbose

Print the request (and TLS details) as well as the response.

--help

Show help and exit.

INSTALL

brew install httpx2

CAVEATS

The binary name httpx2 does not collide with ProjectDiscovery httpx, but mixing the two in scripts is easy if you type the wrong command.--http2 needs the optional h2 extra. SOCKS proxies and Brotli/Zstd decoding are also optional extras (httpx2[socks], httpx2[brotli], httpx2[zstd]), not CLI flags.Requires Python 3.10+. Pair options (--headers, --params, --data, --auth, --cookies, --files) take two argv tokens, not Name:Value as in HTTPie.

HISTORY

HTTPX was created by Tom Christie (encode/httpx). With upstream activity slowing, Pydantic forked stewardship as HTTPX2 (BSD-3-Clause) so the library keeps receiving security and maintenance updates. The CLI command was renamed from httpx to httpx2 to match the package.

RESOURCES

Source code · Homepage