Proposal for Enhanced Syntax to Access Request, Folder, and Collection Metadata in Bruno

[helloanoop]

Proposing a standardized syntax for accessing metadata and file attributes associated with requests, folders, and collections in Bruno.

Background

Please note that Bruno supports name of the request to be different from the name of the file.
Same goes for folder name. This is in development and will be merged soon. Below is a video demo of the same

request-folder-names.mp4

PR: #3094

Proposal

With that in mind, here is the proposed syntax for accessing request, folder and collection name.

Getting Request, Folder and Collection Name

This is stored in meta tag in bru lang and is what appears in the request name in the UI
Assume a file at /Users/john/payments-collection/folder/request.json

meta {
  name: Custom Request Name
}

Property Syntax	Output
req.name	Custom Request Name
req.folderName	folder
req.collectionName	payments-collection

Method Syntax	Output
req.getName()	Custom Request Name
req.getFolderName()	folder
req.getCollectionName()	payments-collection

Getting Request File

Assume a file at /Users/john/payments-collection/folder/request.json

Shorthand Syntax	Output
req.file.path.absolute	/Users/john/payments-collection/folder/request.json
req.file.path.relative	folder/request.json
req.file.name	request.json
req.file.basename	request
req.file.extname	json
req.file.dirname	folder

Method Syntax	Output
req.getFile().getAbsolutePath()	/Users/john/payments-collection/folder/request.json
req.getFile().getRelativePath()	folder/request.json
req.getFile().getName()	request.json
req.getFile().getBaseName()	request
req.getFile().getExtName()	json
req.getFile().getDirName()	folder

Related Issues / PRs

• implements req.getPathName() #3298
• feat: request/folder names should be independent of the actual file/directory name #3094
• RFE: Add support for using the collection hierarchy as a variable in requests #2064
• [Feature] New bru.scriptpath with path to .bru file in addition to bru.cwd #2480
• Add context to request execution #1874
• A way to access the name of a request #3195

[nikischin]

Hi @helloanoop and thank you for the proposal.

For me this seems reasonable, however I don't know all implications it may have.

Just to give one example:
I might have a collection containing a structure like this

SomeFolder

• getItems
• getItem

SomeOtherFolder

• getItems
• getItem

For the current implementation, if I call bru.setNextRequest("getItem") in SomeOtherFolder/getItems, it will call SomeFolder/getItem.

In my opinion, this is not the expected behavior, as I would expect to prefer requests in the current folder instead of any other ones. Because of this behavior, in the runner, this leads to an endless loop as it always jumps back and forth. This belongs to a separate bug ticket for sure (not sure if I already opened one for this) but with Folder and Request Names not being the same as the file name it could get even a bit more complicated here.

Not trying to say this is getting worse with these proposals, but at least something we should keep in mind.

Generally I am a Fan of the concept of having Request Names and File names separated, and was wondering if this could even allow same Request Names within one collection. Let's say I have two variations of the same API Endpoint I am testing, I could give them a name like setMySampleRequestData (only title) and setMySampleRequestData (all fields), but honestly, as this name would be too long to display in the sidebar anyhow, and just reduces the number of the visible tabs, I could also just name both setMySampleRequestData without a visible difference in the name and have the file names like setMySampleRequestData-1 and setMySampleRequestData-2.

This however, to return to the previous challenge makes me think if we should hand over the file names or maybe even relative file paths to functions like bru.setNextRequest in order not to run into issues like the one mentioned above.