quickly simulate a http POST request

While there may be many different ways to do this, one of the easiest ways would be to use SOAP UI. This is a great tool for testing Web Services, but lends itself well to what we want to achieve here.

1) Download SOAP UI and quickly create a project > test suite > test case > test step (HTTP request). Choose defaults for all values and you should be done in less than a minute.

2) Now in the Http test Request window, select the method as POST and put in the target URL. There is a space to enter the body of the request. In the example below, I have chosen "text/xml" for media type and have pasted a JSON string in the body. You can also set any headers that you need to set.

3) Hit the green arrow in the top left hand corner of the window. Your test is underway.

4) You will see the response, if any, in the response tab.

As mentioned earlier in this post, SOAP UI is an excellent tool to test Web Services. Give it a WSDL and it generates a whole suite of tests to test each and every call of the wsdl. Pretty cool huh? It can do much more than what we have touched upon here. Its an essential tool for any development involving web services.