Developer README for ESP API Command Line Tool

Overview

This tool is designed to interact with HPCC ESP services, providing four commands: describe, test, list-services, and list-methods.

describe: Allows users to explore available services, methods, and their request-response structures.
test: Enables sending requests in various formats (XML, JSON, or form query strings) to the ESP services.
list-services: Invoked by the auto-complete script, this command provides a list of names of all ESP services.
list-methods: Invoked by the auto-complete script, this command provides a list of names of all methods within an ESP service.

ESDL Directory Location: The tool gathers the directory of the ESDL files from an environment configuration variable; gets the install path from jutil library and appends /componentfiles/esdl_files/.
Server and Port Defaults: When using the test command, if the server and port are not specified, the tool defaults to interacting with an ESP instance located at http://127.0.0.1:8010.

Custom ESDL Directory Argument: An additional argument could be introduced to allow users to specify the directory of the ESDL files directly in the command.
Template Request Generation: A feature could be added to generate template XML or JSON requests. This would simplify the process of filling out requests by providing a pre-structured template.
Credential Prompts: The tool could be expanded to prompt for the username and password upon a 401 Unauthorized response.
Selective Response Extraction: Another potential feature is to allow extraction of specific tags from the response using XPath expressions. This would make it easier to parse and analyze responses.