Resend or copy an HTTP request from the browser
If we want to understand why a web application behaves in a certain way, often the fastest way is by sending and investigating HTTP requests directly in the browser. Modern browsers make it trivial to reuse a request that has already been sent, so we don’t need to create requests manually. Additionally, we don’t need to recreate any other context, like cookies, that can produce different results.
The Resend or the Edit and Resend features in browser development tools are the right tools for the job (they might be named differently among browsers). In Firefox, you can access them through the request context menu in the network tab:
The Edit and Resend option is particularly useful as you can quickly customize existing request and send it with different headers, body, or URL:
If examining requests in the browser is not enough, or you want to take the requests with you elsewhere, there is another handy feature called Copy as cURL. As the name suggests, this feature will create a command for curl, the most famous HTTP command line tool.
Using the copied request directly in a terminal is one option, but due to curl popularity, it is also possible to use the command in other contexts. Many other HTTP clients understand the curl invocation, so, for example, it is possible to use it directly in GUI clients like Postman. Another option is to transform the call into another language or library, e.g. through curl converter or AI assistant.
Let me know how you handle your requests,
Petr