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Keymaps

Overview

As explained in the Help System section, you can view the keybindings for any widget by pressing F1 or Ctrl+? when that widget has focus.

If you wish to use different keybindings, you can do so by editing the keymap section of your config.yaml file. Check the location of that file on your system by running posting locate config on the command line.

Changing the keymap

Actions in Posting have unique IDs which map to a keybinding (listed at the bottom of this page). For any of these IDs, you can change the keybinding by adding an entry to the keymap section of your config.yaml file:

keymap:
  <ID>: <key-combination>

Here's an example of changing the keybinding for the "Send Request" action:

keymap:
  send-request: ctrl+r

After adding the above entry to config.yaml and restarting Posting, you'll notice that that the footer of the app now shows ^r to send a request rather than the default ^j.

Now you can press ^r to send a request instead of ^j.

You can also have multiple keys map to the same action by separating them with commas:

keymap:
  send-request: ctrl+r,ctrl+i

Note that by adding an entry to the keymap you are overriding the default keybinding for that action, so if you wish to keep the default keybinding, you'll need to specify it again:

keymap:
  send-request: ctrl+r,ctrl+i,ctrl+j

Key format

Support for keys in the terminal varies between terminals, multiplexers and operating systems. It's a complex topic, and one that may involve some trial and error. Some keys might be intercepted before reaching Posting, and your emulator might not support certain keys.

  • To specify Ctrl+X, use ctrl+x.
  • To specify Ctrl+Shift+X, use ctrl+X (control plus uppercase "X").
  • To specify multiple keys, separate them with commas: ctrl+shift+left,ctrl+y.
  • To specify a function key, use f<number>. For example, F1 would be f1.
  • To specify @ (at) use at (not e.g. Shift+2 as this only applies to some keyboard layouts).
  • Arrow keys can be specified as left, right, up and down.
  • shift works as a modifier non-printable keys e.g. shift+backspace, shift+enter, shift+right are all acceptable. Support may vary depending on your emulator.
  • alt also works as a modifier e.g. alt+enter.
  • ctrl+enter, alt+enter,ctrl+backspace, ctrl+shift+enter, ctrl+shift+space etc. are supported if your terminal supports the Kitty keyboard protocol.
  • Other keys include (but are not limited to) comma, full_stop, colon, semicolon, quotation_mark, apostrophe, left_bracket, right_square_bracket, left_square_bracket, backslash, vertical_line (pipe |), plus, minus, equals_sign, slash, asterisk,tilde, percent_sign.

The only way to know for sure which keys are supported in your particular terminal emulator is to install Textual, run textual keys, press the key you want to use, and look at the key field of the printed output.

Work in progress

In the future, I hope to make it easier to discover which keys are supported and when key presses they correspond to for a particular environment directly within Posting. This will likely take the form of a CLI command that outputs key names and their corresponding key presses. For now, if you need assistance, please open a discussion on GitHub.

Binding IDs

These are the IDs of the actions that you can change the keybinding for:

  • send-request - Send the current request. Default: ctrl+j,alt+enter.
  • focus-method - Focus the method selector. Default: ctrl+t.
  • focus-url - Focus the URL input. Default: ctrl+l.
  • save-request - Save the current request. Default: ctrl+s.
  • expand-section - Expand or shrink the section which has focus. Default: ctrl+m.
  • toggle-collection - Toggle the collection browser. Default: ctrl+h.
  • new-request - Create a new request. Default: ctrl+n.
  • commands - Open the command palette. Default: ctrl+p.
  • help - Open the help dialog for the currently focused widget. Default: f1,ctrl+question_mark.
  • quit - Quit the application. Default: ctrl+c.
  • jump - Enter jump mode. Default: ctrl+o.