Recording

Capture a sequence of API calls and replay them as a regression test or a live mock. Click the red record button in the action bar, make a few calls, click stop — the captured sequence becomes a named, replayable recording you can re-run with one click, convert into test assertions, or export as a HAR file.

Recording a scenario

  1. Click the red ● Record button in the bottom action bar. The button switches to Stop, the icon pulses, and a small step counter appears next to the label.
  2. Make any number of API calls — gRPC, REST, GraphQL, MCP, SSE, SignalR, WebSocket. Every successful invocation is captured into the active recording, including the request body, metadata, server URL, status, duration and response payload.
  3. Click Stop when you're done. The recording is automatically named Recording <timestamp> and saved to disk at ~/.bowire/recordings.json.

Managing recordings

Shift-click the record button (or right-click) to open the recordings manager. The left panel lists every recording you've ever made; the right panel shows the selected recording's details:

  • Editable name — click the title to rename
  • Step list — every captured call with protocol badge, service / method, status, duration, and a per-step delete button
  • Action toolbar — Replay, Convert to Tests, Export HAR, Export JSON, Delete

Replay

Click Replay to re-run every step of the recording in order. The modal highlights the running step and flips completed steps to a green PASS or red FAIL badge with the live duration.

Variable substitution happens at replay time using the current environment — not the environment that was active when the recording was made. This makes recordings deliberately portable across Dev / Staging / Prod: switch your env selector, hit replay, the same scenario runs against the new target.

Streaming and channel methods are flagged with their methodType and skipped during replay (the SSE / channel endpoints aren't routed through /api/invoke so the replay path doesn't dispatch them).

Convert to Tests

Click Convert to Tests to turn every captured response into a regression suite. For each step, two assertions are appended onto the recorded (service, method) pair:

  1. path=status, op=eq, expected=<captured-status>
  2. path=response, op=eq, expected=<captured-response-body>

Existing manual assertions on those methods are left in place — the convert is append-only, never overwrites. After conversion, every matching method auto-runs the new assertions on its next invocation and you see PASS / FAIL right in the response pane.

Export HAR

Click Export HAR to download the recording as an HTTP Archive 1.2 document. Each step becomes one HAR entry with a synthetic HTTP request + response, the captured durationMs lands in timings.wait, and the original protocol name is preserved on the request comment field.

The HAR format is recognised by Chrome DevTools, Firefox DevTools, Postman, Insomnia, Charles Proxy, Fiddler — the standard interchange format for HTTP traces. Drop the file into any of these tools to inspect, replay, or share with teammates who don't have Bowire installed.

Export JSON

Click Export JSON to download the raw Bowire recording document ({id, name, description, createdAt, steps[]}). The JSON is human-readable, ideal for committing to a repo as a regression fixture, or sharing with other Bowire users (who can drop it into their ~/.bowire/recordings.json).

How it persists

Recordings live at ~/.bowire/recordings.json (next to the existing environments.json). The on-disk file is the source of truth; the browser keeps a localStorage cache for instant updates without server round-trips, and writes back to disk via a debounced PUT to /bowire/api/recordings after every step.

The RecordingStore C# helper validates JSON on save (refuses to overwrite the file with garbage) and falls back to the empty default shape when the file is missing or corrupt — the UI keeps working in both cases.

Implementation references

  • C# store: Kuestenlogik.Bowire.RecordingStore
  • C# endpoints: Kuestenlogik.Bowire.Endpoints.BowireRecordingEndpoints (GET / PUT / DELETE /bowire/api/recordings)
  • JS state machine + UI: wwwroot/js/recording.js
  • Capture hook: every addHistory call site in wwwroot/js/api.js (invokeUnary, invokeStreaming) and wwwroot/js/protocols.js (channel handlers) also calls captureRecordingStep when a recording is active
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