Feature request: HTTP-blocks for Livebook

[kputh]

Hi.

As as Web-Developer I frequently need to test, use and explore REST APIs. And I want to do this in a repeatable, documented, version-controlled, and programming-language-agnostic and implementation-agnostic way. While Livebook currently supports the "repeatable, documented and version-controlled" part, it lacks a language-agnostic and implementation-agnostic way to do so.

Instead of writing a block like this

Mix.install([
  {:req, "~> 0.5.0"}
])

Req.get!("https://api.github.com/repos/wojtekmach/req")

I want to write a block like this

GET https://api.github.com/repos/wojtekmach/req

My inspiration for this feature is the HTTP client in JetBrain's IDEs.

The following example is what a request to a REST API requiring authentication could look like:

POST https://api.some.org/users/
Authorization: Bearer {token}
Content-Type: application/json

{ "name": "J. Doe" }

I loaned ideas from JetBrains and HEEx templates to insert a token string from a fictitious, preceeding elixir block here. And if the response was available in following elixir code blocks, I could automatically validate or visualize the returned data. (BTW, yes, GitHub does have syntax highlighting for HTTP requests.)

[jonatanklosko]

You could use a smart cell, like Merquery, to specify HTTP request declaratively via UI. That is going to use Elixir code underneath still.