Web client

The web client is the Porticol workbench in a browser, served by Porticol Cloud or by your team server at its own address. Sign in there with your password and, if your organisation asks for one, a second factor or single sign-on. It opens your organisation's workspace, with the same collections, environments and documents as the desktop app.

What stays on the desktop

Some features need your computer, so the web client leaves them out: mock servers on your computer, the collection runner, flows, performance runs, updates, the workspace switcher, sync, and the Account, Local agent and Data sections of Settings. Where a feature reads your computer, such as certificates, cookies, the system proxy, OAuth token fetching, Git and secret managers, the web client says it is in the desktop app instead.

How a request is sent

A browser can't send everything a desktop can, so the web client sends in one of three ways, and says which beside Send.

Through the local agent. Pair the browser with the local agent, the desktop app in agent mode or porticol-agent on its own, and requests go out from your computer: they reach localhost and your private network, with your environment, keychain secrets, cookies and certificates. This is the only way that sends with variables, auth and scripts, and the only way for protocols other than HTTP.

From the browser. With no agent paired, the browser sends the request as typed, without variables, auth or scripts, and under its own rules:

• The API has to allow the web client's address through CORS.
• Cookie, Host and other headers a page can't set are left out.
• No client certificate or proxy is used.
• Timing is approximate.
• Only the response headers the API exposes through CORS show.

From the team server. A team server's operator can turn on sending from the server, with the server_send setting. With no agent paired, the team server then sends the request as typed, without variables, auth or scripts. It goes over HTTPS to public addresses only unless the operator allows private ones, to the hosts the operator lists if any, at most a set number of times a minute for each person, and each send is in the audit log with its method, host and status. Porticol Cloud never sends for the web client.