Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs

When automating business processes at work, I found it difficult and time-consuming to reverse engineer business systems' APIs. I often had to manually reverse engineer APIs using developer tools or settle for less optimal technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

Often, the issue is that it can be hard to resolve all the cookies, access tokens, and other elements required to successfully execute the requests. Manually trying to resolve these dependencies using developer tools is especially challenging with multiple requests where data is stored in JavaScript objects or HTML elements.

To try to solve this issue, I built a tool called API Parrot that automatically identifies the data correlations between requests and builds a graphical representation of the flow to give users a better understanding. To streamline the process, I also included functionality to record requests, define your own inputs and outputs, and export the entire flow—or parts of it—as JavaScript code.

The application is Electron-based and currently compiled for Windows and Linux. Please try it out and give feedback!

Online Tutorial: A simple example of reverse engineering the USPS API is available at https://docs.apiparrot.com/docs/category/tutorial---reverse-...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42565821

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https://apiparrot.com/