Neovim registers and command-line mode can be combined to a pretty decent REST API client. This tip shows how.
First, open a new buffer and add the API request:
Now, yank the current line, which places the contents of the current line into register 0:
Finally, lets build the command to call the API and insert the response. First, we learned previously that we can use the :read command to call a shell command and insert its output. The call signature is:
:read !{cmd} [args]
In this case we want to call a REST API, so lets use curl to call the API and receive the response. The command to achieve is:
curl -s '{request}'
where the -s option tells curl to operate in "silent mode". Finally, we could
hard-code the request into the command, but we have already yanked it to register 0.
We can retrieve register contents in command-line mode using C-R followed by the
register name, so our complete command is:
:read !curl -s '<C-r>0'
Executing this command produces:
if you find yourself using this often, consider creating a macro to save yourself a few keystrokes.