CLI

The Nouto CLI runs collections from a terminal or a CI pipeline. It reads collection files exported from the VS Code extension or the desktop app, sends the requests, checks assertions and script tests, and sets its exit code so a pipeline can fail the build when a request fails.

Installation

The CLI isn’t published to npm. Build it from the Nouto repository with Git, Node.js, and pnpm. The built CLI runs on Node.js 18 or later.

git clone https://github.com/frostybee/nouto.git
cd nouto
pnpm install --filter "@nouto/cli..."
pnpm run build:core
pnpm run build:cli
node packages/cli/dist/bin/cli.js --help

The --filter "@nouto/cli..." flag installs only the CLI and the packages it depends on. The CLI depends on @nouto/core, so build core before the CLI.

The examples in these pages use nouto as the command name. From a source checkout, replace nouto with node packages/cli/dist/bin/cli.js.

Commands

The CLI has five commands:

Command	Purpose
nouto run	Run every HTTP request in a collection and report the results
nouto benchmark	Send one request repeatedly and report latency percentiles
nouto import	Convert a Postman, Insomnia, Hoppscotch, Thunder Client, HAR, Bruno, OpenAPI, or cURL file to a Nouto collection
nouto export	Convert a Nouto collection file to Nouto format or HAR
nouto codegen	Generate a code snippet for a saved request

Run nouto <command> --help to print the options for a command.

Run a collection

Run every request in a collection file:

nouto run my-collection.nouto.json

Run with an environment, using every row of a CSV data file:

nouto run my-collection.nouto.json \
  --env environments.json \
  --env-name Production \
  --data test-data.csv \
  --iterations 0

Write the results as JUnit XML for a CI server:

nouto run my-collection.nouto.json \
  --reporter junit \
  --output results.xml

CLI: Configuration covers the TLS, proxy, cookie, and variable options, and the order in which the CLI resolves variables.

Collection files

Every command except import reads a Nouto collection file. To create one, right-click a collection in the sidebar and choose Export > Nouto Collection, or convert a file from another tool with nouto import.

The CLI accepts three JSON shapes:

• A single-collection export, as written by Export > Nouto Collection or nouto import.
• A multi-collection export. The CLI reads only the first collection in the file.
• A raw collection object with id, name, and items fields.

Exit codes

All commands use the same exit codes:

Code	Meaning
0	The command succeeded. For run, every request passed. For benchmark, every iteration succeeded.
1	For run, at least one request failed. For benchmark, at least one iteration failed. The CLI also exits with 1 for invalid usage, such as a missing argument.
2	A file the command needs is missing: the collection file, the import input file, the .env file, the CA certificate, or the client certificate config. run also exits with 2 when the data file has no rows.
3	The environment file is missing, isn’t valid JSON, has no environments array, or has no environment matching --env-name.
4	The collection file isn’t valid JSON or isn’t a Nouto collection, or run found no requests to execute, for example because --tags matched nothing.
5	benchmark or codegen found no request matching --request.
6	import couldn’t detect the input format. Pass --from to set it.
7	Any other error, such as a --folder that matches no folder, a missing data file or one that isn’t .csv or .json, a malformed --env-var pair, a missing codegen option, or an unsupported --from or --to value.