So we now have an Alfresco CMIS server that we can talk to. Next, we need a tool that can be used to make HTTP requests to the server. We are going to test the AtomPub and Browser CMIS bindings, which are based on the HTTP protocol and the back and forth sending of XML and JSON.

One really good tool that can be used for this is cURL; it is available for most platforms. On my Ubuntu laptop, I can just use the #sudo apt-get install curl command to install it. On Windows, you can download cURL from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html. If you are on a Mac, then Apple has a different version of cURL as part of the developer tools; it's also available through Homebrew using brew install curl.

Later on, in this chapter, we will also look at using the Chrome browser to view XML and JSON responses and some other command-line tools to parse and display XML and JSON.