wscli

wscli

A lightweight and powerful Go command-line tool for interacting with WebSocket servers. Designed for testing, debugging, and scripting, wscli provides functionality similar to wscat but with additional features. This tool is actively developed.

🚀 Installation

Using Docker

$ docker run -it akshaykhairmode/wscli:latest -c "ws://example.com/ws"

Using go install

go install github.com/akshaykhairmode/wscli@latest

Download Prebuilt Binaries

If you don’t have Go installed, download the latest binaries from the Releases Page.

🔧 Usage

Connect to a local WebSocket server

$ wscli -c ws://localhost:8080/ws

Connect with custom headers

$ wscli -c ws://ws://localhost:8080/ws -H "Authorization: Bearer mytoken" -H "X-Custom: value"

Send a command directly after connecting

$ wscli -c ws://ws://localhost:8080/ws -x '{"action": "subscribe", "channel": "updates"}'

send a close message with code 1000 and reason "normal closure"

$ wscli --slash -c ws://localhost:8080/ws
/close 1000 normal closure

send a file

$ wscli --slash -c ws://localhost:8080/ws
/bfile /home/user/test.bin

✨ Features

• 🔹 Native Binaries: Distributable and easy to install across systems.
• 📤 Piped Input: Send piped input by using pipe |. (Note: Interactive terminal features are disabled when using this mode.)
• 📨 Multiple Messages on Connect: Send multiple messages immediately after connecting.
• 🎭 Background Execution:
  • Run wscli in the background using nohup:

    $ nohup wscli -c ws://localhost/ws -w 1s > nohup.out 2>&1 &
    

  • Redirect output and run in the background:

    $ wscli -c ws://localhost/ws >> output.txt & 2>&1
    

• 📜 History Persistence: Maintain a command history for quick reuse.
• ⚡ Command Execution on Connect: Use -x to execute commands automatically after connection.
• 📌 JSON Pretty Printing: Format JSON responses with the --jspp flag.
• ⌨️ Terminal Shortcuts: Supports readline shortcuts like Ctrl+W (delete word) and Ctrl+R (reverse search). See full list.
• 🗂️ Binary File Transfer: Send a file as binary message to the server.

🛠 Available Flags

🛠 Slash Commands (enable via --slash flag)

🚧 Upcoming Features (TODO)

• Basic Load Generation: Support for load testing via interactive mode.
• WebSocket Listener: Implement a feature to start a WebSocket server.