Lesson 1.1: First contact

Difficulty: Beginner | Duration: 10 min | Prerequisites: Unit 0; a running sample (see below)

Overview

Your first hands-on time in the workbench: discover a service in the sidebar and invoke a unary method — all from the browser UI. This lesson is the canonical invoke walkthrough; the CLI, embedded and extension units link back here instead of repeating it.

You already have a workbench open from Lesson 0.3. This unit uses the Harbor Combined sample from Bowire.Samples — it embeds Bowire and speaks REST + gRPC + SignalR + WebSocket + SSE against one domain, so open http://localhost:5101/bowire.

Skipped setup? cd harbor-demo/src/Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Samples.Combined && dotnet run in a Bowire.Samples clone, then open the URL above — full options in Lesson 0.3. The UI below is identical however the workbench was mounted.

The workbench at a glance

The workbench loads with the vertical rail strip down the left edge — one rail per activity (Compose, Recordings, Mocks, Flows, Interceptor, Benchmarking, Help, Workspaces, Settings; see Lesson 0.1). For first contact you mostly live in two:

  • Compose rail — the request builder + invoke pane (per-protocol layouts).
  • Workspaces rail — the workspace picker (scopes env vars, recordings, saved tabs). First boot lands you in a Default workspace; nothing to create to follow along.

Steps

1. Discover the service

With the workbench open against the Combined sample, the sidebar tree auto-populates from everything the host advertises — the Harbor domain (Ship, Dock, Crane, Container, PortCall) shows up as method nodes, grouped by protocol. No manual schema upload: the REST plugin read the host's OpenAPI document, the gRPC plugin read Server Reflection, and so on — all discovered in one pass.

2. Invoke a unary method

  1. In the sidebar, expand the REST entry and pick a simple read — e.g. list ships or get a dock by id.
  2. The Compose rail renders a form built from the schema — path/query params and, for a body, a JSON editor.
  3. Fill any required fields and click Invoke (or Ctrl+Enter).
  4. The response pane shows the status, headers, and the JSON body.

That's the whole loop: Discover → pick a method → fill the schema-built form → Invoke → read the response. It is identical for every protocol and every service you point the workbench at.

3. Try another operation

Pick a method that takes a request body (a create/update). Notice the invoke pane auto-builds a JSON body editor from the request schema — you never hand-write the envelope.

Key Takeaways

  1. Auto-discovery is the headline. The sidebar populates from the service's own schema surface (OpenAPI / reflection / introspection) — no manual operation authoring.
  2. One invoke primitive. Every method — any protocol — gets the same schema-driven form + Invoke + response pane.
  3. The workbench is shape-agnostic. Whether Bowire was embedded (this lesson) or launched via the CLI, the UI you just used is the same.

What's Next

Continue: → Lesson 1.2: Multi-protocol in one workbench

Reference