与C＃开发人员就API中的错误进行沟通的最佳方法是什么？

Question

I'm testing an API which is written by C# developers. I am a Perl developer. So I would like a language agnostic way to send them bug reports. For GET requests this is trivial (unless headers are involved). But for POSTs its not.

Many sites that document APIs these days use curl commands in their documentation in order to provide language agnostic examples. For example Stripe .

In the Unix or OSX world I would send them a curl command and say when you run this the response is broken in some way. But curl is not native to Windows (although it can be installed and run on Windows). Are C# devs aware of curl? Do they use curl? I assume they are not thrilled to be pushed onto the command line, but I can't think of a better way to talk about these things. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

But for POSTs its not.

Why? At the end GET and POST are HTTP. Send over the header that is sent, not your API call.

Are C# devs aware of curl?

I am not. I would not accept such a bug report. But I would gladly accept the HTTP payload as a dump.

I assume they are not thrilled to be pushed onto the command line,

I would not assume curl being pushed on the command line. I would assume it being pushed to a tool I don't like intalling. I use command line all the time - heck, I maintain a software that is mostly used by some people thorugh the command line.

Just command line in windows is PowerShell.

Answer 2

Do not use curl. It's far to Unix-y for most C# programmers. As a rule it will require some kind of command line escaping convention, and that's not portable either. It will not be welcome.

I see nothing wrong with providing the exact HTTP call/request sequence in your bug report as plain text.

1. Anyone can read it in a totally language-agnostic way.
2. It's relatively easy to cut and paste fragments to try it out.
3. If anyone is interested enough in your bug reports, it's easy enough to write a little tool to convert it into something C# can handle, or Powershell, or even curl.

[As it happens I use C#, curl and even wget perfectly happily in Windows, but my answer stands.]