HTTP Action

Type: HTTP Action | Category: Web | Icon: 🌐

Sends an HTTP request and returns the response body as a string. This is the primary way to fetch data from web APIs in Tasks.

Settings

Setting Type Default Description
Method Get / Post / Put / Patch / Delete Get HTTP method
URI string — Request URL. Supports variable substitution (e.g., https://api.example.com/search?q={searchText})
Send JSON Body bool false Send the body as application/json content type
Headers List of key-value pairs [] Request headers (e.g., Authorization: Bearer {apiKey}). Supports variable substitution
Body string (JSON editor) — Request body text. Use {{variableName}} for variable substitution in JSON

Timeout: 15 seconds per request.

Outputs

Output Type Description
String The response body text

Default variable mappings

Variable Name Expression Description
httpResponseContent result The raw HTTP response body

Examples

Dictionary lookup

URI: https://api.dictionaryapi.dev/api/v2/entries/en/{searchText}
Method: Get

Then use Parse JSON to extract definitions.

POST with JSON body

URI: https://api.example.com/translate
Method: Post
Send JSON Body: true
Body: {{"text": "{{searchText}}", "target": "es"}}

Note the double curly brackets — required to distinguish variable interpolation from JSON syntax.

Tips

  • Prefer APIs that don't require authentication. If you must use an API key, store it in a Task project setting and reference it as {apiKey}.
  • Use a Condition to check {httpResponseContent != null} before processing.
  • Chain with Parse JSON to extract specific fields from JSON responses.
  • For APIs that return HTML, use a C# Script to parse the response.