[Feature Request] Reference another JSON object as an environment variable

• Insomnia Version: 5.14.9
• Operating System: Ubuntu 17.10

Details

When defining base and sub environments you’re unable to dump a raw variable to return a JSON object.

For example, the following environment results in an Unexpected token { in JSON at position 286 error:

{
    "addresses": {
        "home": {
            "line1": "123 E Fake Street",
            "city": "Nowheresville",
            "state": "AL",
            "zip_code": "12345"
        },
        "work": {
            "line1": "123 E Fake Street",
            "city": "Nowheresville",
            "state": "AL",
            "zip_code": "12345"
        }
    },
    "people": {
        "name": "John Pinkerton",
        "phone_number": "123-456-7890",
        "address": {{ addresses.home | dump }}        
    }
}

The problem is specific to the {{ addresses.home | dump }} variable. I don’t get the error if I surround the variable in quotes but then it is treated as a string instead of an object. The same variable works fine in a request body.

EDIT: If it wasn’t obvious the expected behavior is that {{ addresses.home | dump }} would parse out to the full JSON object:

{
    "line1": "123 E Fake Street",
    "city": "Nowheresville",
    "state": "AL",
    "zip_code": "12345"
}

[gschier]

I see. Thanks for the example 😄

At this moment, plugins aren’t able to modify the environment (only read it). But, if this functionality were added, you could write a simple plugin that looked at your environment and built these objects for you.

For example:

"combos": {
       "cheeseburger_combo": ["cheeseburger", "french_fries", "fountain_drink"]
}

Then, a plugin could look through the array and replace the cheeseburger_combo array with the full-constructed object before the request is made.

Just an idea for the future.

[gschier]

FYI, I Just published the plugin under insomnia-plugin-jsonpath if you want to try it out.