To put it plainly, the "Make HTTP request" action is an incredible masochistic process. Ohh, please make the pain stop :)

As a developer, I need to work on an API call to an external CMS system in use by the client. That vendor uses GraphQL Queries which I need to put into the body of my call.

GraphQL Queries use JSON. Which needs to be escaped multiple times in order to be pasted into a plain vanilla body call. This call does not work with parameters either, so everything needs to be substituted by Webflow's template variable system:

\n\t\tcolumn_values: \n\t\t\"{\\\"status2\\\":\\\"\\\",\\\"text\\\":\\\"first name\\\",\\\"email\\\":{\\\"email\\\":\\\"email\\\",\\\"text\\\":\\\"first name  last name\\\"},\\\"phone\\\":\\\"phone\\\",\\\"long_text1\\\":\\\"comment\\\",\\\"long_text\\\":\\\"Google Click ID\\\",\\\"long_text5\\\":\\\"Who was at fault?: 
How severe was the damage to the vehicle?:
Were you injured?

Only deeply passionate regex users get excited at that code excerpt. Like Christmas in July. Since I actually do love regex, that might be something I could deal with.... except...

Please look at the attached screenshot.

1. The body field. It's SO tiny. Teeny Weeny. It's smaller than my cellphone. It takes up less than 10% of the space. Perfect for fairies and wee folk, but not for Oklahoma farm boys squinting their eyes.

2. The template variable button is literally a 16x16 tiny icon

3. It is SLOW. You can't tell from the screenshot, but I type and wait for text to appear in the box.

4. It's very difficult to point and click inside the box to choose the exact right spot for the template variable

5. It's not intuitive at all that the reason I cannot test the setup is that the gear icon on the template variable requires a default value. Until I clicked it, I was about to make a support ticket complaining the flow logic UI/UX was broken.

6. YOU CANNOT COPY AND PASTE. At least not without losing the template variables.

7. When testing, you cannot save or reuse previous testing values requested when you send form fields in the body.

8. Your CSS stylist messed with the zoom functions in the browser. Increasing the zoom to 200% only results in the occlusion of the test button and a portion of the body field. So I cannot make it bigger to work with easier.

#6 makes workarounds almost impossible since I cannot work with my call in a bigger, better, purpose-built API tool like Insomnia. I cannot export the properly formatted and multi-escaped JSON object to be pasted into Webflow.

Lastly, I'm sure I'm not the only developer who needs to spend hours developing an API call with dozens of test calls. Please help us with a more friendly interface.

P.S - Other than the body being practically unusable due to the interface, the function overall is rather good.

2023-09-27_14-0...

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