fetch

fetch

fetch is a modern, high-level HTTP(S) client for the command line.

Features include:

• Response formatting: automatically formats and colors output for supported types (json, msgpack, xml, etc.)
• Image rendering: render images directly in your terminal
• Compression: automatic gzip and zstd response body decompression
• Authentication: support for Basic Auth, Bearer Token, and AWS Signature V4
• Form body: send multipart or urlencoded form bodies
• Editor integration: use an editor to modify the request body
• Configuration: global and per-host configuration
• and more!

Installation

You can install fetch using an installation script, by compiling from source, or from pre-built binaries.

Installation Script

For macOS or Linux, download and run the install.sh script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ryanfowler/fetch/main/install.sh | bash

Building from Source

Ensure you have Go installed, then run:

go install github.com/ryanfowler/fetch@latest

Pre-built Binaries

Visit the GitHub releases page to download the binary for your operating system.

Updating

Once installed, you can update the fetch binary in-place by running:

fetch --update

Or you can let the application auto-update by including the following setting in your configuration file:

auto-update = true

Usage

To make a GET request to a URL and print the status code to stderr and the response body to stdout:

fetch example.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

{
  "name": "example",
  "value": 42
}

For complete usage documentation including all available options and advanced features, see USAGE.md.

Configuration

fetch can be configured using a file with an ini-like format. Configuration files support both global settings and host-specific configurations.

File Locations

fetch searches for configuration files in the following order:

• the file location specified with the -c or --config flag
• on Windows at %AppData%\fetch\config
• on Unix-like systems at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fetch/config or $HOME/.config/fetch/config

Configuration Precedence

Settings are applied in the following order of precedence:

• CLI flags (highest priority)
• domain-specific configuration
• global configuration
• default values (lowest priority)

Basic Example

# Global settings
color = on
format = on
timeout = 30

# Domain-specific settings
[api.example.com]
header = X-API-Key: your-api-key
timeout = 10

For complete configuration documentation including all available options, file format details, and advanced examples, see CONFIG.md.

License

fetch is released under the MIT License.