Export & Import

Bowire supports exporting requests as grpcurl commands and importing/downloading response data.

Export as grpcurl

From the request editor, click the Export button to generate a grpcurl-compatible command for the current method and request body. The generated command includes:

  • The fully qualified service and method name
  • The request body as a -d JSON argument
  • Any metadata headers as -H flags
  • The server URL

Example output:

grpcurl -d '{"city":"Berlin"}' \
  -H "authorization: Bearer token123" \
  localhost:5001 \
  weather.WeatherService/GetCurrentWeather

This is useful for sharing exact invocations with team members or including them in documentation.

JSON Response Download

Click the Download button in the response viewer to save the response body as a JSON file. For streaming responses, the download includes all received messages as a JSON array.

Copy to Clipboard

Click the Copy button to copy the response body to your clipboard. For streaming responses, this copies all messages received so far.

File-Based Input (CLI)

In CLI mode, use @filename to read the request body from a file:

bowire call --url https://server:443 \
  weather.WeatherService/GetCurrentWeather -d @request.json

This is useful for large or complex request bodies that are cumbersome to type inline.

Schema export — bowire export

bowire export turns a live discovery result back into a portable schema artefact. Pair it with bowire mock --schema (which goes the other direction — schema → live mock endpoint) to round-trip a captured surface between teams without the original service being reachable.

Two subcommands, picked by output format:

# REST → OpenAPI 3.0
bowire export openapi http://api.example.com --output api.yaml

# Messaging → AsyncAPI 3.0. URL scheme picks the wire plugin
# (mqtt / nats / kafka / ws / amqp / amqp1 / pulsar / http).
bowire export asyncapi mqtt://broker:1883 --output sensors.yaml
bowire export asyncapi nats://broker:4222 --format json

Both commands accept an optional --recording <file> — when supplied, every operation in the emitted document gets an x-bowire-coverage extension reporting whether the recording carries replay steps for it and how many:

bowire export openapi http://api.example.com \
  --recording session.bwr \
  --output api-with-coverage.yaml

# api-with-coverage.yaml
paths:
  /users/{id}:
    get:
      operationId: getUser
      x-bowire-coverage:
        recorded: true
        stepCount: 3
    post:
      operationId: createUser
      x-bowire-coverage:
        recorded: false
        stepCount: 0

This is the consumer-side view of the mock-as-stand-in story: the recording carries the original contract, the exporter re-emits it with coverage so a team can tell which slice the recorded mock can replay deterministically vs. which slice would have to fall back to schema-generated samples.

Default output is YAML to stdout (omit --output to pipe somewhere). Override with --format json, --title <s>, --version-info <s> if needed. Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 plugin-not-loaded / discovery failure, 2 usage error (empty URL, unrecognised scheme).

See also: CLI Mode, UI Guide -- Response Pane, Mock Server

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