CLI Overview

Orb is a modern HTTP client for the command line, designed as a powerful alternative to cURL. Built with Rust, it offers native support for HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 (QUIC), and WebSockets.

Basic Usage

orb [OPTIONS] <URL>

The only required argument is the URL. By default, orb makes a GET request and prints the response body to stdout.

orb https://api.example.com/users

Key Features

• Modern Protocols: HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 with automatic negotiation
• WebSocket Support: First-class WebSocket connections with interactive mode
• cURL Compatibility: Familiar options like -H, -d, -X, -u, -o
• JSON Shorthand: --json flag for easy JSON requests
• Compression: Built-in support for zstd, brotli, gzip, deflate
• Progress Bar: Automatic for large downloads
• TLS/mTLS: Full certificate support including client certificates

Common Patterns

API Requests

# GET with auth header
orb https://api.example.com/users -H "Authorization: Bearer token"

# POST JSON
orb https://api.example.com/users -X POST --json '{"name": "Alice"}'

# PUT with headers
orb https://api.example.com/users/1 \
  -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "Bob"}'

Download Files

# Save to file
orb https://example.com/file.zip -o file.zip

# With progress bar
orb https://example.com/large-file.iso -o large-file.iso

Debug Requests

# Show request/response headers
orb -v https://example.com

# Show timing statistics
orb -w https://example.com

WebSockets

# Connect and send message
orb wss://echo.websocket.org --ws-message "Hello"

# Interactive mode
orb wss://echo.websocket.org

Tip

Use -s (silent mode) to suppress all output except errors. Useful for scripts that only care about exit codes.

Next Steps

• HTTP Requests - Methods, headers, body data
• Authentication - Basic auth and bearer tokens
• Options Reference - Complete list of all options