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Binary Request Bodies

Source file: examples/binary_request_body.hen

What It Demonstrates​

  • body_file = @path for raw file-backed request bodies
  • explicit Content-Type headers for binary uploads
  • assertions against the echoed Buffer-shaped payload returned by Postman Echo

Key Pattern​

POST https://postman-echo.com/post

body_file = @./files/raw_payload.bin
* Content-Type = application/octet-stream

^ & status == 200
^ & body.headers.content-type == 'application/octet-stream'
^ & body.data.type == 'Buffer'
^ & body.data.data[0] == 114
^ & body.data.data[1] == 97
^ & body.data.data[2] == 119
^ & body.data.data[27] == 49

Run It​

hen verify ./examples/binary_request_body.hen
hen run ./examples/binary_request_body.hen all --non-interactive

What To Notice​

  • Hen reads the outbound body directly from disk instead of an inline ~~~ block.
  • body_file paths are resolved relative to the collection file.
  • The request body is sent as raw bytes, which matches curl --data-binary @file semantics.
  • Postman Echo reports an application/octet-stream payload as a JSON Buffer object, so the assertions inspect the returned byte array instead of a plain string body.
  • File-backed bodies are only valid for ordinary HTTP requests.

Related reference: Requests and bodies