7 ms·

Show HN: Restfox – Open source lightweight alternative to Postman

758 points by kermire 4y ago

Last time I posted this it didn't garner much interest. There have been lots of improvements and fixes since the last release. Quick list of features: - Workspaces - Tabs - Nested Folders - Lots of context menus - Response history - Plugins - Runs fully in the browser and runs offline if necessary - Chrome and Firefox extension to bypass CORS restrictions - Desktop builds for all platforms - GraphQL support - Import collections exported from Postman and Insomnia - Simple user friendly interface I built this because I love Insomnia but wanted a portable version that I could run in the browser. If you're tired of Postman's bloated interface and slow startup times, do give this a try.

si1entstill 4y ago
I switched to "vscode-restclient" about a year ago and never looked back. It has variables, everything is saved as text, and I can commit my request suite to source control for collaboration's sake. https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient
- markcollin 4y ago
  I have been recently trying https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno and it allows you to use your own version control
- Lord_Zero 4y ago
  The only reason I use Postman still is the Authentication tab has really nice helpers for getting tokens (OAuth 1/2) and signing requests HMAC. It even works with Azure Active Directory.
- tinodb 4y ago
  Same here. Usually you just want to make simple queries, and this is a simple text based way to make m.
ushakov 4y ago
If you want something like Restfox but as a CLI, that tests your APIs automatically, give Step CI a try https://stepci.com https://stepci.com It’s free and open-source on GitHub! Disclaimer: I’m the author
jdthedisciple 4y ago
Entering "news.ycombinator.com" and pressing send gives me an error.
- Trufa 4y ago
  In the error message the solution is present, install the addon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/restfox-cors-helper/pgoncladmcclnmilkbnmmbldcihdgfnf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/restfox-cors-helpe... There's also a FF one.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  I'd expect someone from HN to give more descriptive reports than "gives me an error".
  - jdthedisciple 4y ago
    You are right and I admit my uh ... error.
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iWelly 4y ago
- Nested Folders
compuguy 4y ago
This certainly looks promising, though the only thing I can see its missing that Postman does is allowing the use of domain specific certificate authentication and the use of a user provided certificate chain.
mrcaramelpants 4y ago
Nice, I wonder how it compares to hoppscotch.io
- kermire 4y ago
  Previous reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671805
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NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Why should I use this over https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io ?
- tartieret 4y ago
  how secure is hoppscotch.io?
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    well it runs in your browser but I don't know how it syncs between browsers.
- deleted 4y ago
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imagineerschool 4y ago
Cool!
HatchedLake721 4y ago
Switched away from Postman to a native Mac app and my RAM couldn't be happier (https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud)
- shmoogy 4y ago
  Seems pretty nice but $50 is a little high - is it really worth the premium?
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    $50 doesn't look high to me, assuming it does everything it says it does really well. Just designing an API in a nice UI is worth more than that! (No affiliation.)
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    It isn’t been, in my experience. If my team used it collaboratively it might be. It’s a solid app and worth it if you’ll use it a lot. I simply didn’t because piling things in there isn’t particularly valuable if it isn’t readily available to the people I work with.
  - s_dev 4y ago
    No -- I used and paid for PAW for a while. I gave up on all MacPaw products once I realized their sales staff contacted me after I asked them not to -- they immediately lost me as customer. They just wanted to 'help' me get on to a more expensive plan that was for Teams. There are plenty of great alternatives: HTTPie is one I like. Haven't found a good alternative to CleanMyMac yet though.
    - samschooler 4y ago
      Unless I'm mistaken, Paw isn't owned by MacPaw? It's an unrealted product with a one time purchase price.
      - s_dev 4y ago
tgv 4y ago
Nice. If you want to implement another feature: see the error response. My server returned 428, but I couldn't see the contents nor header, only a generic "preview".
- kermire 4y ago
  That's very odd. Will look into this.
  - tgv 4y ago
    And the Cookie header isn't sent? (using it on Firefox 106.1).
    - kermire 4y ago
      I'm using the fetch API for making requests and fetch sadly forbids the Cookie header from getting passed. Will be looking into how I can bypass this.
      - tgv 4y ago
        ~~I think axios can. Its API is similar to fetch, except for the return status. You could also manipulate the cookies before and after transmission, but that might be messy when you hit the browser's cookie limits.~~ Scratch that. I wasn't thinking clearly. I ran the call from restfox.dev, and it's another domain, of course. You'd need to write your own http client to get around it.
Nihilartikel 4y ago
My version of Postman is to open a Jupyter notebook and >> import requests
- deleted 4y ago
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Snacklive 4y ago
Page is not working for me. I'm in Firefox
- neogodless 4y ago
  Windows 10, Firefox 106.0.1, uBlock, multi-account containers, facebook container, bitwarden, DDG privacy, consent-o-matic, font contrast, dark reader Works fine for me. Opened a request to https://api.publicapis.org/entries https://api.publicapis.org/entries and it fetched results.
duiker101 4y ago
My favorite testing HTTP Client is still just the IntelliJ built-in, pure text. You know exactly what you send without having to navigate menus and whatnot. In the end, 99% of HTTP requests are just that, text.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Can you chain requests together? Like if a request requires auth it will invoke login then take the token for use in the next request.
  - kozziollek 4y ago
    I haven't used it myself, but there is an option to parse responses with JavaScript and set variables. GET https://httpbin.org/get > {% client.global.set("my_cookie", response.headers.valuesOf("Set-Cookie")[0]); %} https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-syntax.html#response-handling https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-syntax.ht...
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Interesting. I have 2 endpoints (login and get settings) I use for testing in a desktop app and sometimes firing up insomnia for that project is a hassle. But rider has that rest client too so maybe I’ll try it for this one thing.
  - onetom 4y ago
    Well... that's called programming, no? :)
- gempir 4y ago
  This is what I wish all http clients could adopt. Use plain text files (IntelliJ already introduced .http files, which work great) Sadly it will never work because that would break 90% of the incentives to pay, which his having a sync system. Because then I could simply commit my http requests and git would be my sync server. Personally I don't like the IntelliJ Client, the UI is kind of ugly and requires a lot of actions each time I want to send and review a response. Insomnia is way better in that regard. Good context might me my issue comment on Hoppscotch: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch/issues/870#issuecomment-719629375 https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch/issues/870#issuecom...
edpichler 4y ago
Be careful with Postman. It seems they upload all your secrets to their servers. We stopped to use it a time ago. I don't know if they changed in this regard.
- BowBun 4y ago
  How else would they sync all of the shared stuff in your workspace? I'm more interested if they properly encrypt my data in transit and at rest and whether Postman employees have free access to our secrets.
  - zzbzq 4y ago
    I got a bulletin from our security team saying Postman stores it all in plain text on their servers. Unbelievable if true. Haven't used it since. They have all your passwords.
    - pletnes 4y ago
      I had this gut feeling, but no way to check. The handling of secrets is not explicitly states, i.e probably bad. I like the looks of httpie’s new desktop client but no idea if their secret handling is any better.
      - Cederfjard 4y ago
        This is from their website: https://www.postman.com/trust/security/ https://www.postman.com/trust/security/ > Depending upon its sensitivity classification, customer data is AES-256-GCM encrypted at the server-side before storage. Postman environment variables are covered in this classification and we strongly encourage you to use them to store your authentication keys and passwords. We have also added sessions in the 6.2 release onwards of Postman. We recommend using session variables for any data that you do not want to be synced to Postman's servers.
        aliqot 4y ago
philliphaydon 4y ago
I switched to insomnia when postman changed their pricing pulling the rug out from everyone wanting us to pay like $300 more per month. (Before they back tracked) https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ I actually prefer it.
- judge2020 4y ago
  One thing I love from Insomnia.rest is the ability to import CURL commands, including an entire list of newline-delimited CURL commands from the clipboard. This makes it easier to modify XHR's you pulled from your browser via a right click -> "copy all as cURL (bash)".
  - donkeyd 4y ago
    Yup. Use this all the time, either when I want to automate something on an undocumented API, or if I want to do some basic security testing on API's at work.
  - apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
    Postman can do this as well. I've been using this a bunch recently due to some project limitations and it has made life so much easier. ETA: I just tried the functionality on Insomnia and I have to admit the UX is nicer. Just paste into the URL bar. Whereas with Postman it's CMD+O, Click on "Raw Text", click in textarea, paste, press import. Insomnia looks to have added OpenAPI support too (it was missing it last time I played with it) so maybe it's time to re-evaluate Insomnia
    - aliqot 4y ago
      Postman's UI is cluttered
      - apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
        I don't disagree. I've just been using it for so long (8 or 9 years now I think) and it's so ingrained in my workflows that I haven't bothered to re-evaluate it in ages. This is probably the kick in the butt I needed.
mch82 4y ago
Cool project! A true, open source alternative to Postman will be valuable. It seems like you’ve got the major elements in place. Unsolicited UX notes… I read Hacker News on mobile, so tried the app on mobile and ran into some challenges. In order to save space, eliminate the right click, and work on mobile please consider changing: You can right click here to create a new request or a new folder To the following (illustrated using pseudo markdown): [Create request] or [Create a folder] It would also be helpful to replace the GitHub star link with a link to your README. GitHub star links are problematic because they require a login that adds friction that prevents people from getting to your README page. People will login if they decide to star the project, but they might never get to your GitHub if they don’t have time to login or can’t easily login on the device where they’re reading.
- kermire 4y ago
  Thank you. The UI is not currently built with mobile in mind. I have been thinking of implementing a responsive layout but haven't had the time to do it. I did not know about the GitHub star login thing. Will try to rectify it when I can. Thanks for all your UX notes.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Github Star link looks fixed.
- Havoc 4y ago
  There is also hopscotch - unsure about licensing but it is self hostable
  - and0 4y ago
    I dug into hoppscotch since my org balked at Postman enterprise costs, but was disappointed. It is open source and can run locally, but it still only talks to their cloud that stores your collections as a logged-in user (or session storage if you're offline). It's definitely a fledgeling commercial project, not a true open-source alternative, though you could fork it easily enough probably. I had been hoping to keep all of our APIs centralized in git and run the local (or cloud for our ENVs) from that repo, but it doesn't read any query/API/collection defs from file. (Not to come off as demanding of OSS, it's a wonderful product, but unfortunately you have to dig deep to figure out the limitations.) EDIT: Also, what I'd go with now is Thunder client for VS code leveraging API defs stored within each repo + the localized vars such as auth info.
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alfor 4y ago
I don’t understand, what is it, what does it do?
- alfor 4y ago
  Ok, it’s a tool to test rest api.
  - jokab 4y ago
    Good for you. Now did you check what postman does?
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gquiniou 4y ago
A nice feature would be import and export from/to Curl commands. When collaborating with clients or even colleagues it's easier to send curl commands.
- kermire 4y ago
  Definitely something I'll be implementing soon. Importing and exporting curl commands is a good feature to have. Thanks for the feature suggestion.
  - mxuribe 4y ago
    I wonder if the chromium project has these functions all ready for you to grab from their dev tools?
user3939382 4y ago
My biggest gripe with Postman is the horrible theming. Except for light and dark, 0 control over the appearance of this app that I have to look at for hours almost every day.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  You don't have to put up with postman. There are better alternatives.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    > You don't have to put up with postman Unless you work on a team that's standardized around it as a collaboration tool.
- topspin 4y ago
  My biggest gripe is that its design leads to accumulating long list of slightly different "tests" whose purpose is soon forgotten. I suppose there are better practices that can stop that, but the path of least resistance is "copy, edit, run," and so a huge pile of meaningless garbage accumulates. Something is missing.
jhoelzel 4y ago
I like it but please dont make me right click to do something! please add a little plus or something like it. Otherwise great work! needs a little disclaimer though that you will not save any of my requests =)
- kermire 4y ago
  Thank you. Will look into preventing the right click requirement and provide an alternative for that. It should be saving your requests automatically. Maybe your browser is blocking IndexedDB somehow? That's what's used by the application to store the data locally. Also do make sure you're not in incognito mode, as changes will be lost once you're out of it.
  - iimblack 4y ago
    Firefox private mode completely blocks indexeddb.
Zamicol 4y ago
The offline part is critical for me. The only other thing I would prefer is an application that doesn't use Electron.
jcuenod 4y ago
InvalidStateError: A mutation operation was attempted on a database that did not allow mutations. [Edit]: I'm on Firefox (with ublock origin). I see others having issues too.
- kermire 4y ago
  Firefox with ublock origin should not cause any issues. The issue might be caused by Firefox's private window implementation which does not allow IndexedDB operations, which is what Restfox uses for storing the data of the application locally.
jetter 4y ago
If you are a minimalist, and are using VS Code, try https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re... which is a pure text syntax to describe API requests, and execute them right from the editor window. I now have api.http text file in every API-first project I am building and I love it.
- SwiftyBug 4y ago
  Do you have a single api.http file or do you you multiple {route}.http files?
  - kxrm 4y ago
    Not OP but you can store all your routes in one file or multiple, it's up to you. Personally what I do is I script out full API workflows in different files. So one file might login, then POST to add an object, then GET that object off an endpoint, then patch that endpoint, then trigger the GET object again. Another workflow might login, upload an image, get that image, etc. For me the scripting is what makes this appealing. But you could setup one file that documents and tests all your endpoints similar to Postman.
- kxrm 4y ago
  I like this one because it's easy to keep API workflows with my projects. The scripting ability here is phenomenal. However only really useful if you code in VS Code.
  - jiehong 4y ago
    Jetbrains also provides a similar, albeit slightly incompatible syntax for the same thing. In the end, I think hurl [0] is nicer, because it’s open source and it’s a cli tool (and VS code also has a syntax highlighting plugin for it), making it editor independent. [0]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl
- deleted 4y ago
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snehesht 4y ago
Noticed a small bug, I can't paste into the URL bar.
progre 4y ago
I'm just now migrating my postman collections to .rest text files and the REST-client plugin for vscode (that name is both good and bad at the same time btw, it like marketing a new car and naming it "Car"). Grantet it does not do everything Postman does but I'm pretty happy so far. Environment variables and secrets stays in a workspace settings.json and the .rest files can be version controlled and shared. Always bet on text!
- twodave 4y ago
  This. My current hobby project[0] is basically something I started because I was frustrated with the inability to version control my tests in Postman alongside my API code. If it can't be committed to source control, then it's not really your code. Now I can run all my tests FAST locally and set up a CI/CD pipeline in about 15 mins that will pick up and run them as well. At this point I'm not even sure a UI is necessary (maybe for the QA folks--maybe just an import from a postman collection will be enough for them, though). [0]: https://github.com/davesheldon/nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap
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Avlin67 4y ago
it is completly garbage on mobile
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barbazoo 4y ago
Postman is the new Dropbox in terms of useless features for the sake of growth or whatever.
roamerz 4y ago
Nice work! I wasn't familiar with insomnia so when I read your first line there I read it as "I love not being able to sleep because it gave me time to code this project..."
- kermire 4y ago
  Haha thanks. Didn't think it could be interpreted like that :D
stonecharioteer 4y ago
Nothing to take away from all of this, but please learn cURL. Postman and all its alternatives are great and all, but they also hide a lot of things that will hinder your debugging skills. As an alternative try httpie. Not because CLIs are cool but because you can see the headers and the raw response more easily. Developers need to understand what content type is, what response headers are, how to limit them, how to tweak them. And the snippets that Postman provides are not always the right way to send requests in a given language
- cercatrova 4y ago
  I like xh as a faster httpie as well
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- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  I'd take Burp Suite over cURL. The command line fucking SUCKS for sending anything beyond basic HTTP requests.
shubham_sinha 4y ago
Postman, Insomnia, Paw seem to fall in similar league. But if you are running VSCode simply use Thunderclient.
LunicLynx 4y ago
I would recommend VS Code with RestClient extension.
- duxup 4y ago
  Yeah I realized that's all I need after a while. Nice to have a file with some calls to make right in the client. Can take those to an outside app if needed.
- Joeri 4y ago
  Same here, I switched from postman and that combination is really all I need.
- locusofself 4y ago
  my needs are very basic, but I've been using vs code extension called ThunderClient
- deleted 4y ago
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jcuenod 4y ago
Is there a way to get it to ignore the cache?
_jayhack_ 4y ago
For anyone looking for an aesthetic Postman alternative, I can't recommend https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ enough
- ecuaflo 4y ago
  Insomnia is open source too
- deleted 4y ago
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arunsivadasan 4y ago
There was previously Postwoman which I believe is now hoppscotch https://github.com/f0rb1d/postwoman https://github.com/f0rb1d/postwoman https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
- deleted 4y ago
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projproj 4y ago
Here's an alternative I recently came across. In Firefox on the network tab of the dev console, right click on an XHR request. You'll have two relevant options: "Resend" and "Edit and Resend". Edit and Resend doesn't give you all the features of Postman, but it is useful and a lot easier. I have spent a lot of time in Postman just putting in all the headers and POST body to set up the API call. With this method in Firefox, all parameters are already set because it's an exact copy of the request you already sent. You can change params or just hit send when you're ready to retest something you're doing on the backend.
- throwaway17474 4y ago
  I am very happy to save you a lot of time for copy&pasting requests to Postman. Since Postman can import curl commands, just right-click on a command in Firefox, Copy as -> Curl, click on the Import in Postman, import as text, paste curl, mission accomplished. Hope it helps.
- deleted 4y ago
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- easrng 4y ago
  They actually removed the plain Resend option and renamed Edit and Resend to just Resend.
sphars 4y ago
Any chance of the ability to do web sockets? Postman has started supporting this recently (in beta) but I really don't want to use Postman. Any other suggestions for web socket testing clients also welcome.
- easrng 4y ago
  hoppscotch can do websockets and socket.io and SSE
- nerdbaggy 4y ago
  I have used https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia for Websocket stuff
- kermire 4y ago
  I definitely intend to add web socket support eventually. Meanwhile, there's https://socketfox.dev https://socketfox.dev which I made for my friends. You can use it to test web sockets.
  - api_or_ipa 4y ago
    https://socketfox.dev/ https://socketfox.dev/ doesn't resolve for me :/
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Aperocky 4y ago
> - Runs fully in the browser and runs offline if necessary Couldn't understand why this isn't the default. curl is always available and slapping a display layer on top of something like curl shouldn't need to talk to some backend server.
- ducktective 4y ago
  >curl is always available curl is not installed by default in many distros Also, I don't think it's possible to call external processes from within the browser sandbox
  - genghizkhan 4y ago
    > curl is not installed by default in many distros Which ones (apart from alpine)? I thought curl was pretty much as basic as it got and is always there.
    - skrtskrt 4y ago
      debian
    - flatiron 4y ago
      I just installed Ubuntu using deboostrap and it did not come with curl (to my surprise)
  - Aperocky 4y ago
    On the top of the concept, not curl itself. If curl can run locally, so should all of these tools.
odiroot 4y ago
I use https://kreya.app/ https://kreya.app/. It is very lean and the only GUI client not using Electron, I could find.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  There's also https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman.
- deleted 4y ago
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npalli 4y ago
Tried to just GET www.google.com; says error and suggests bypassing with some plugins. Don't think I want to continue further.
- replygirl 4y ago
  try to `fetch('https://www.google.com https://www.google.com')` from console on a few different websites and you'll see either CSP errors or the same CORS errors that come up in restfox. all the extension does is send the request with the runtime api to get around the (good and reasonable) security constraints on web pages loaded over http: https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/tree/main/packages/browser-extension/v3/src https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/tree/main/packages/b...
inso1 4y ago
Hi I am one of the contributors to Insomnia. You guys are all invited to join our Slack channel and give us suggestions and feedback! https://chat.insomnia.rest/ https://chat.insomnia.rest/
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- CrimsonRain 4y ago
  Add env color on SEND button.
schipplock 4y ago
In the past I was using SoapUI. I liked it. Just because you guys were mentioning Postman alternatives :).
simjnd 4y ago
Hoppscotch [1][2] (previously Postwoman) is also a very nice free and open-source Postman alternative. [1]: https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ [2]: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
- fzyzcjy 4y ago
  I also thought about this when reading the title. Would be great to see a comparison between the new tool and postwoman
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v3ss0n 4y ago
Importing of postman is very important feature, I will take a look definitely.
kcartlidge 4y ago
> Last time I posted this it didn't garner much interest. Looks good. I use Postman daily and it sucks, so always open to alternatives. I don't recall what it looked like the last time you posted, but I wonder if part of the low interest is because upon arrival it doesn't instantly jump out to the visitor that this is something you can host/run locally. It's very easy to miss the Github links top right. And if you don't realise that, then what you see is a third party website expecting you to send your development requests through their UI, which is off-putting. As I say, I don't remember, but that may be why I skipped it last time. I'll pay more attention this time! (Edit: split paragraphs for clarity)
- nerdponx 4y ago
  What do you think Insomnia and/or Stoplight?
- infotecht 4y ago
  I currently use Postman but havent had problems yet, though next week I'm joining an API crew. Your opinion seems strong; could you tell me where you ran into pitfalls with it I should look out for?
  - smt88 4y ago
    Postman is a classic victim of venture funding. It was a great, simple, useful product, and then they had to become a rapid-growth business. The app has been buggy since its first major overhaul, and it now also has incredible feature bloat. It's hard to find what you want, and the UI is constantly pushing you to make use of features you don't want to use. It no longer works well as a scratchpad because they want you to organize everything into a full API IDE, which is not something I want or need.
    - porker 4y ago
      Agree with all. There are also inconsistencies between Postman running in the browser and the desktop app. I documented a 3rd party API in Postman desktop and the called me all sorts of names because it didn't work. Postman support told them to download the desktop client and then it worked.
steve_john 4y ago
gregwebs 4y ago
I have been trying out https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev and so far been really liking it. Plain text format, everything runs very quickly locally, it can capture data from previous requests to run workflows and serve as a testing tool.
- ushakov 4y ago
  If you like hurl, you may also like Step CI, which uses yaml, generates tests from your OpenAPI spec and is easy to integrate with CI/CD Give it a try: https://stepci.com https://stepci.com It's free and open-source on GitHub, built by the community! Disclaimer: I'm the original author
  - gregwebs 4y ago
    Having a startup delay because the cli is written in node is a non starter for me. Hurl is written in Rust and starts up incredibly fast. It looks nice though for those that want to stick with the JS ecosystem though.
    - ushakov 4y ago
      I totally understand. I'm a big fan of Rust myself, but we decided to go with TypeScript so we could quicker iterate on ideas and introduce new features. Another reason is that our goal is to be a community-driven project and I think we both can agree that there are far more web developers using JS than any other programming language Our workflow specs are open-source as well, so if anybody wants to contribute a compatible runner written in other language - you're welcome! https://github.com/stepci/stepci/blob/main/docs/workflow-syntax.md https://github.com/stepci/stepci/blob/main/docs/workflow-syn...
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- johntash 4y ago
  Thanks for mentioning hurl. I just started looking into it and Insomnia (with the cli) as potential replacements for ci testing tools. hurl looks pretty simple to use, and way easier to get started with than what we're using at work currently.
mmgutz 4y ago
If you're using VS Code and only need to test REST APIs, then try "Rest Client" extension by Huachao Mao. It does everything I used Postman for, using a text file. A quality of life changer.
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SirIntruder 4y ago
Sorry for a complete tangent - I've been assuming gray OP's text in ask/show meant people were downvoting a post and it always weirded me out - now had to double check to confirm it's simply always grayed out (why though?)
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yewenjie 4y ago
If you live in Emacs, there is the amazing verb package that does the same, it supports org-mode primarily and also integrates with org-babel nicely. https://github.com/federicotdn/verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb
- b5n 4y ago
  Although I mainly stick with curl or requests due to muscle memory, there's also restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el. I imagine having builtin org support is super convenient, thanks for sharing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- neop1x 4y ago
  For Visual Studio Code there is a similar plugin called REST Client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
maxloh 4y ago
What's the difference between Restfox and https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia ? Seems both of them are Postman alternative.
- culi 4y ago
  An even more mature project is Hoppscotch (47k stars) https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/
mmis1000 4y ago
I think the whole point of people still use postman today is a easy way the sync between users or manage user that have access to the workspace. There are a lot of alternatives without such features. But with such feature? Not too much.
humility 4y ago
what's wrong with hoppscotch?
cloverr20 4y ago
I have moved from postman to https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client and have never looked back ever since, its opens in vim and has variables to store values and can store comments too in a .txt file along with the http calls. Give this a try if you are using vim.
markcollin 4y ago
Nice to the tools come out to save us from postman bloat I have been recently trying out bruno - https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno It allows me to save my collection on my filesystem (as folders and files) and I use git to save them in my private repo
jicea 4y ago
There are really goods suggestions in this thread, I just made a compilation of all the links posted (at this time): Restfox https://restfox.dev/ https://restfox.dev/ bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno Hoppscotch https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ Hit https://hit.yolo42.com/ https://hit.yolo42.com/ HTTP Client https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-code-editor.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c... Hurl https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev Insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia Kreya https://kreya.app https://kreya.app Milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman Nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap Paw https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el REST Client https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient Socketfox https://socketfox.dev https://socketfox.dev Step CI https://stepci.com https://stepci.com vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb
- bbkane 4y ago
  Saved for the next time I need to test some REST! Thank you!
- culi 4y ago
  So the most popular open-source Postman alternatives seem to be HoppScotch (47.7k stars, 2019, Vue): https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch Insomnia (24.2k stars, 2017, React): https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia Restfox (405 stars, 2022, Vue): https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox bruno (30 stars, 2022, Tauri, Electron, Next): https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno --- You can find more here: https://alternativeto.net/software/postman/ https://alternativeto.net/software/postman/
  - helloanoop 4y ago
snarfy 4y ago
If I just need to make a simple POST or PUT I'll use Firefox's dev tools network tab. Right click a request and click 'Edit and resend'. If I need more than that I'll use vscode restclient.
ndimares 4y ago
Wha's always boggled me about Postman is that it doesn't have autosave. It's 2022, what doesn't have autosaving? So thank you for adding auto-saving, huge improvement on Postman!
josephd79 4y ago
Paw for mac users, native client.

758 points by kermire 4y ago

si1entstill 4y ago

I switched to "vscode-restclient" about a year ago and never looked back. It has variables, everything is saved as text, and I can commit my request suite to source control for collaboration's sake. https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient

markcollin 4y ago
I have been recently trying https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno and it allows you to use your own version control
Lord_Zero 4y ago
The only reason I use Postman still is the Authentication tab has really nice helpers for getting tokens (OAuth 1/2) and signing requests HMAC. It even works with Azure Active Directory.
tinodb 4y ago
Same here. Usually you just want to make simple queries, and this is a simple text based way to make m.

ushakov 4y ago

If you want something like Restfox but as a CLI, that tests your APIs automatically, give Step CI a try https://stepci.com https://stepci.com It’s free and open-source on GitHub! Disclaimer: I’m the author

jdthedisciple 4y ago

Entering "news.ycombinator.com" and pressing send gives me an error.

Trufa 4y ago
In the error message the solution is present, install the addon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/restfox-cors-helper/pgoncladmcclnmilkbnmmbldcihdgfnf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/restfox-cors-helpe... There's also a FF one.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I'd expect someone from HN to give more descriptive reports than "gives me an error".
- jdthedisciple 4y ago
  You are right and I admit my uh ... error.

deleted 4y ago

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iWelly 4y ago

- Nested Folders

compuguy 4y ago

This certainly looks promising, though the only thing I can see its missing that Postman does is allowing the use of domain specific certificate authentication and the use of a user provided certificate chain.

mrcaramelpants 4y ago

Nice, I wonder how it compares to hoppscotch.io

kermire 4y ago
Previous reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32671805

deleted 4y ago

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NayamAmarshe 4y ago

Why should I use this over https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io ?

tartieret 4y ago
how secure is hoppscotch.io?
- naikrovek 4y ago
  well it runs in your browser but I don't know how it syncs between browsers.
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imagineerschool 4y ago

Cool!

HatchedLake721 4y ago

Switched away from Postman to a native Mac app and my RAM couldn't be happier (https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud)

shmoogy 4y ago
Seems pretty nice but $50 is a little high - is it really worth the premium?
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  $50 doesn't look high to me, assuming it does everything it says it does really well. Just designing an API in a nice UI is worth more than that! (No affiliation.)
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  It isn’t been, in my experience. If my team used it collaboratively it might be. It’s a solid app and worth it if you’ll use it a lot. I simply didn’t because piling things in there isn’t particularly valuable if it isn’t readily available to the people I work with.
- s_dev 4y ago
  No -- I used and paid for PAW for a while. I gave up on all MacPaw products once I realized their sales staff contacted me after I asked them not to -- they immediately lost me as customer. They just wanted to 'help' me get on to a more expensive plan that was for Teams. There are plenty of great alternatives: HTTPie is one I like. Haven't found a good alternative to CleanMyMac yet though.
  - samschooler 4y ago
    Unless I'm mistaken, Paw isn't owned by MacPaw? It's an unrealted product with a one time purchase price.
    - s_dev 4y ago

tgv 4y ago

Nice. If you want to implement another feature: see the error response. My server returned 428, but I couldn't see the contents nor header, only a generic "preview".

kermire 4y ago
That's very odd. Will look into this.
- tgv 4y ago
  And the Cookie header isn't sent? (using it on Firefox 106.1).
  - kermire 4y ago
    I'm using the fetch API for making requests and fetch sadly forbids the Cookie header from getting passed. Will be looking into how I can bypass this.
    - tgv 4y ago
      ~~I think axios can. Its API is similar to fetch, except for the return status. You could also manipulate the cookies before and after transmission, but that might be messy when you hit the browser's cookie limits.~~ Scratch that. I wasn't thinking clearly. I ran the call from restfox.dev, and it's another domain, of course. You'd need to write your own http client to get around it.

Nihilartikel 4y ago

My version of Postman is to open a Jupyter notebook and >> import requests

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Snacklive 4y ago

Page is not working for me. I'm in Firefox

neogodless 4y ago
Windows 10, Firefox 106.0.1, uBlock, multi-account containers, facebook container, bitwarden, DDG privacy, consent-o-matic, font contrast, dark reader Works fine for me. Opened a request to https://api.publicapis.org/entries https://api.publicapis.org/entries and it fetched results.

duiker101 4y ago

My favorite testing HTTP Client is still just the IntelliJ built-in, pure text. You know exactly what you send without having to navigate menus and whatnot. In the end, 99% of HTTP requests are just that, text.

philliphaydon 4y ago
Can you chain requests together? Like if a request requires auth it will invoke login then take the token for use in the next request.
- kozziollek 4y ago
  I haven't used it myself, but there is an option to parse responses with JavaScript and set variables. GET https://httpbin.org/get > {% client.global.set("my_cookie", response.headers.valuesOf("Set-Cookie")[0]); %} https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-syntax.html#response-handling https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-syntax.ht...
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Interesting. I have 2 endpoints (login and get settings) I use for testing in a desktop app and sometimes firing up insomnia for that project is a hassle. But rider has that rest client too so maybe I’ll try it for this one thing.
- onetom 4y ago
  Well... that's called programming, no? :)
gempir 4y ago
This is what I wish all http clients could adopt. Use plain text files (IntelliJ already introduced .http files, which work great) Sadly it will never work because that would break 90% of the incentives to pay, which his having a sync system. Because then I could simply commit my http requests and git would be my sync server. Personally I don't like the IntelliJ Client, the UI is kind of ugly and requires a lot of actions each time I want to send and review a response. Insomnia is way better in that regard. Good context might me my issue comment on Hoppscotch: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch/issues/870#issuecomment-719629375 https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch/issues/870#issuecom...

edpichler 4y ago

Be careful with Postman. It seems they upload all your secrets to their servers. We stopped to use it a time ago. I don't know if they changed in this regard.

BowBun 4y ago
How else would they sync all of the shared stuff in your workspace? I'm more interested if they properly encrypt my data in transit and at rest and whether Postman employees have free access to our secrets.
- zzbzq 4y ago
  I got a bulletin from our security team saying Postman stores it all in plain text on their servers. Unbelievable if true. Haven't used it since. They have all your passwords.
  - pletnes 4y ago
    I had this gut feeling, but no way to check. The handling of secrets is not explicitly states, i.e probably bad. I like the looks of httpie’s new desktop client but no idea if their secret handling is any better.
    - Cederfjard 4y ago
      This is from their website: https://www.postman.com/trust/security/ https://www.postman.com/trust/security/ > Depending upon its sensitivity classification, customer data is AES-256-GCM encrypted at the server-side before storage. Postman environment variables are covered in this classification and we strongly encourage you to use them to store your authentication keys and passwords. We have also added sessions in the 6.2 release onwards of Postman. We recommend using session variables for any data that you do not want to be synced to Postman's servers.
      - aliqot 4y ago

philliphaydon 4y ago

I switched to insomnia when postman changed their pricing pulling the rug out from everyone wanting us to pay like $300 more per month. (Before they back tracked) https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ I actually prefer it.

judge2020 4y ago
One thing I love from Insomnia.rest is the ability to import CURL commands, including an entire list of newline-delimited CURL commands from the clipboard. This makes it easier to modify XHR's you pulled from your browser via a right click -> "copy all as cURL (bash)".
- donkeyd 4y ago
  Yup. Use this all the time, either when I want to automate something on an undocumented API, or if I want to do some basic security testing on API's at work.
- apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
  Postman can do this as well. I've been using this a bunch recently due to some project limitations and it has made life so much easier. ETA: I just tried the functionality on Insomnia and I have to admit the UX is nicer. Just paste into the URL bar. Whereas with Postman it's CMD+O, Click on "Raw Text", click in textarea, paste, press import. Insomnia looks to have added OpenAPI support too (it was missing it last time I played with it) so maybe it's time to re-evaluate Insomnia
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Postman's UI is cluttered
    - apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
      I don't disagree. I've just been using it for so long (8 or 9 years now I think) and it's so ingrained in my workflows that I haven't bothered to re-evaluate it in ages. This is probably the kick in the butt I needed.

mch82 4y ago

Cool project! A true, open source alternative to Postman will be valuable. It seems like you’ve got the major elements in place. Unsolicited UX notes… I read Hacker News on mobile, so tried the app on mobile and ran into some challenges. In order to save space, eliminate the right click, and work on mobile please consider changing: You can right click here to create a new request or a new folder To the following (illustrated using pseudo markdown): [Create request] or [Create a folder] It would also be helpful to replace the GitHub star link with a link to your README. GitHub star links are problematic because they require a login that adds friction that prevents people from getting to your README page. People will login if they decide to star the project, but they might never get to your GitHub if they don’t have time to login or can’t easily login on the device where they’re reading.

kermire 4y ago
Thank you. The UI is not currently built with mobile in mind. I have been thinking of implementing a responsive layout but haven't had the time to do it. I did not know about the GitHub star login thing. Will try to rectify it when I can. Thanks for all your UX notes.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Github Star link looks fixed.
Havoc 4y ago
There is also hopscotch - unsure about licensing but it is self hostable
- and0 4y ago
  I dug into hoppscotch since my org balked at Postman enterprise costs, but was disappointed. It is open source and can run locally, but it still only talks to their cloud that stores your collections as a logged-in user (or session storage if you're offline). It's definitely a fledgeling commercial project, not a true open-source alternative, though you could fork it easily enough probably. I had been hoping to keep all of our APIs centralized in git and run the local (or cloud for our ENVs) from that repo, but it doesn't read any query/API/collection defs from file. (Not to come off as demanding of OSS, it's a wonderful product, but unfortunately you have to dig deep to figure out the limitations.) EDIT: Also, what I'd go with now is Thunder client for VS code leveraging API defs stored within each repo + the localized vars such as auth info.

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alfor 4y ago

I don’t understand, what is it, what does it do?

alfor 4y ago
Ok, it’s a tool to test rest api.
- jokab 4y ago
  Good for you. Now did you check what postman does?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

gquiniou 4y ago

A nice feature would be import and export from/to Curl commands. When collaborating with clients or even colleagues it's easier to send curl commands.

kermire 4y ago
Definitely something I'll be implementing soon. Importing and exporting curl commands is a good feature to have. Thanks for the feature suggestion.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  I wonder if the chromium project has these functions all ready for you to grab from their dev tools?

user3939382 4y ago

My biggest gripe with Postman is the horrible theming. Except for light and dark, 0 control over the appearance of this app that I have to look at for hours almost every day.

datavirtue 4y ago
You don't have to put up with postman. There are better alternatives.
- user3939382 4y ago
  > You don't have to put up with postman Unless you work on a team that's standardized around it as a collaboration tool.
topspin 4y ago
My biggest gripe is that its design leads to accumulating long list of slightly different "tests" whose purpose is soon forgotten. I suppose there are better practices that can stop that, but the path of least resistance is "copy, edit, run," and so a huge pile of meaningless garbage accumulates. Something is missing.

jhoelzel 4y ago

I like it but please dont make me right click to do something! please add a little plus or something like it. Otherwise great work! needs a little disclaimer though that you will not save any of my requests =)

kermire 4y ago
Thank you. Will look into preventing the right click requirement and provide an alternative for that. It should be saving your requests automatically. Maybe your browser is blocking IndexedDB somehow? That's what's used by the application to store the data locally. Also do make sure you're not in incognito mode, as changes will be lost once you're out of it.
- iimblack 4y ago
  Firefox private mode completely blocks indexeddb.

Zamicol 4y ago

The offline part is critical for me. The only other thing I would prefer is an application that doesn't use Electron.

jcuenod 4y ago

InvalidStateError: A mutation operation was attempted on a database that did not allow mutations. [Edit]: I'm on Firefox (with ublock origin). I see others having issues too.

kermire 4y ago
Firefox with ublock origin should not cause any issues. The issue might be caused by Firefox's private window implementation which does not allow IndexedDB operations, which is what Restfox uses for storing the data of the application locally.

jetter 4y ago

If you are a minimalist, and are using VS Code, try https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re... which is a pure text syntax to describe API requests, and execute them right from the editor window. I now have api.http text file in every API-first project I am building and I love it.

SwiftyBug 4y ago
Do you have a single api.http file or do you you multiple {route}.http files?
- kxrm 4y ago
  Not OP but you can store all your routes in one file or multiple, it's up to you. Personally what I do is I script out full API workflows in different files. So one file might login, then POST to add an object, then GET that object off an endpoint, then patch that endpoint, then trigger the GET object again. Another workflow might login, upload an image, get that image, etc. For me the scripting is what makes this appealing. But you could setup one file that documents and tests all your endpoints similar to Postman.
kxrm 4y ago
I like this one because it's easy to keep API workflows with my projects. The scripting ability here is phenomenal. However only really useful if you code in VS Code.
- jiehong 4y ago
  Jetbrains also provides a similar, albeit slightly incompatible syntax for the same thing. In the end, I think hurl [0] is nicer, because it’s open source and it’s a cli tool (and VS code also has a syntax highlighting plugin for it), making it editor independent. [0]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl
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[deleted]

snehesht 4y ago

Noticed a small bug, I can't paste into the URL bar.

progre 4y ago

I'm just now migrating my postman collections to .rest text files and the REST-client plugin for vscode (that name is both good and bad at the same time btw, it like marketing a new car and naming it "Car"). Grantet it does not do everything Postman does but I'm pretty happy so far. Environment variables and secrets stays in a workspace settings.json and the .rest files can be version controlled and shared. Always bet on text!

twodave 4y ago
This. My current hobby project[0] is basically something I started because I was frustrated with the inability to version control my tests in Postman alongside my API code. If it can't be committed to source control, then it's not really your code. Now I can run all my tests FAST locally and set up a CI/CD pipeline in about 15 mins that will pick up and run them as well. At this point I'm not even sure a UI is necessary (maybe for the QA folks--maybe just an import from a postman collection will be enough for them, though). [0]: https://github.com/davesheldon/nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap
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Avlin67 4y ago

it is completly garbage on mobile

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barbazoo 4y ago

Postman is the new Dropbox in terms of useless features for the sake of growth or whatever.

roamerz 4y ago

Nice work! I wasn't familiar with insomnia so when I read your first line there I read it as "I love not being able to sleep because it gave me time to code this project..."

kermire 4y ago
Haha thanks. Didn't think it could be interpreted like that :D

stonecharioteer 4y ago

Nothing to take away from all of this, but please learn cURL. Postman and all its alternatives are great and all, but they also hide a lot of things that will hinder your debugging skills. As an alternative try httpie. Not because CLIs are cool but because you can see the headers and the raw response more easily. Developers need to understand what content type is, what response headers are, how to limit them, how to tweak them. And the snippets that Postman provides are not always the right way to send requests in a given language

cercatrova 4y ago
I like xh as a faster httpie as well
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Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I'd take Burp Suite over cURL. The command line fucking SUCKS for sending anything beyond basic HTTP requests.

shubham_sinha 4y ago

Postman, Insomnia, Paw seem to fall in similar league. But if you are running VSCode simply use Thunderclient.

LunicLynx 4y ago

I would recommend VS Code with RestClient extension.

duxup 4y ago
Yeah I realized that's all I need after a while. Nice to have a file with some calls to make right in the client. Can take those to an outside app if needed.
Joeri 4y ago
Same here, I switched from postman and that combination is really all I need.
locusofself 4y ago
my needs are very basic, but I've been using vs code extension called ThunderClient
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jcuenod 4y ago

Is there a way to get it to ignore the cache?

_jayhack_ 4y ago

For anyone looking for an aesthetic Postman alternative, I can't recommend https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ enough

ecuaflo 4y ago
Insomnia is open source too
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arunsivadasan 4y ago

There was previously Postwoman which I believe is now hoppscotch https://github.com/f0rb1d/postwoman https://github.com/f0rb1d/postwoman https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

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projproj 4y ago

Here's an alternative I recently came across. In Firefox on the network tab of the dev console, right click on an XHR request. You'll have two relevant options: "Resend" and "Edit and Resend". Edit and Resend doesn't give you all the features of Postman, but it is useful and a lot easier. I have spent a lot of time in Postman just putting in all the headers and POST body to set up the API call. With this method in Firefox, all parameters are already set because it's an exact copy of the request you already sent. You can change params or just hit send when you're ready to retest something you're doing on the backend.

throwaway17474 4y ago
I am very happy to save you a lot of time for copy&pasting requests to Postman. Since Postman can import curl commands, just right-click on a command in Firefox, Copy as -> Curl, click on the Import in Postman, import as text, paste curl, mission accomplished. Hope it helps.
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easrng 4y ago
They actually removed the plain Resend option and renamed Edit and Resend to just Resend.

sphars 4y ago

Any chance of the ability to do web sockets? Postman has started supporting this recently (in beta) but I really don't want to use Postman. Any other suggestions for web socket testing clients also welcome.

easrng 4y ago
hoppscotch can do websockets and socket.io and SSE
nerdbaggy 4y ago
I have used https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia for Websocket stuff
kermire 4y ago
I definitely intend to add web socket support eventually. Meanwhile, there's https://socketfox.dev https://socketfox.dev which I made for my friends. You can use it to test web sockets.
- api_or_ipa 4y ago
  https://socketfox.dev/ https://socketfox.dev/ doesn't resolve for me :/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Aperocky 4y ago

> - Runs fully in the browser and runs offline if necessary Couldn't understand why this isn't the default. curl is always available and slapping a display layer on top of something like curl shouldn't need to talk to some backend server.

ducktective 4y ago
>curl is always available curl is not installed by default in many distros Also, I don't think it's possible to call external processes from within the browser sandbox
- genghizkhan 4y ago
  > curl is not installed by default in many distros Which ones (apart from alpine)? I thought curl was pretty much as basic as it got and is always there.
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    debian
  - flatiron 4y ago
    I just installed Ubuntu using deboostrap and it did not come with curl (to my surprise)
- Aperocky 4y ago
  On the top of the concept, not curl itself. If curl can run locally, so should all of these tools.

odiroot 4y ago

I use https://kreya.app/ https://kreya.app/. It is very lean and the only GUI client not using Electron, I could find.

wiseowise 4y ago
There's also https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman.
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npalli 4y ago

Tried to just GET www.google.com; says error and suggests bypassing with some plugins. Don't think I want to continue further.

replygirl 4y ago
try to `fetch('https://www.google.com https://www.google.com')` from console on a few different websites and you'll see either CSP errors or the same CORS errors that come up in restfox. all the extension does is send the request with the runtime api to get around the (good and reasonable) security constraints on web pages loaded over http: https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/tree/main/packages/browser-extension/v3/src https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/tree/main/packages/b...

inso1 4y ago

Hi I am one of the contributors to Insomnia. You guys are all invited to join our Slack channel and give us suggestions and feedback! https://chat.insomnia.rest/ https://chat.insomnia.rest/

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CrimsonRain 4y ago
Add env color on SEND button.

schipplock 4y ago

In the past I was using SoapUI. I liked it. Just because you guys were mentioning Postman alternatives :).

simjnd 4y ago

Hoppscotch [1][2] (previously Postwoman) is also a very nice free and open-source Postman alternative. [1]: https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ [2]: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

fzyzcjy 4y ago
I also thought about this when reading the title. Would be great to see a comparison between the new tool and postwoman
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v3ss0n 4y ago

Importing of postman is very important feature, I will take a look definitely.

kcartlidge 4y ago

> Last time I posted this it didn't garner much interest. Looks good. I use Postman daily and it sucks, so always open to alternatives. I don't recall what it looked like the last time you posted, but I wonder if part of the low interest is because upon arrival it doesn't instantly jump out to the visitor that this is something you can host/run locally. It's very easy to miss the Github links top right. And if you don't realise that, then what you see is a third party website expecting you to send your development requests through their UI, which is off-putting. As I say, I don't remember, but that may be why I skipped it last time. I'll pay more attention this time! (Edit: split paragraphs for clarity)

nerdponx 4y ago
What do you think Insomnia and/or Stoplight?
infotecht 4y ago
I currently use Postman but havent had problems yet, though next week I'm joining an API crew. Your opinion seems strong; could you tell me where you ran into pitfalls with it I should look out for?
- smt88 4y ago
  Postman is a classic victim of venture funding. It was a great, simple, useful product, and then they had to become a rapid-growth business. The app has been buggy since its first major overhaul, and it now also has incredible feature bloat. It's hard to find what you want, and the UI is constantly pushing you to make use of features you don't want to use. It no longer works well as a scratchpad because they want you to organize everything into a full API IDE, which is not something I want or need.
  - porker 4y ago
    Agree with all. There are also inconsistencies between Postman running in the browser and the desktop app. I documented a 3rd party API in Postman desktop and the called me all sorts of names because it didn't work. Postman support told them to download the desktop client and then it worked.

steve_john 4y ago

gregwebs 4y ago

I have been trying out https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev and so far been really liking it. Plain text format, everything runs very quickly locally, it can capture data from previous requests to run workflows and serve as a testing tool.

ushakov 4y ago
If you like hurl, you may also like Step CI, which uses yaml, generates tests from your OpenAPI spec and is easy to integrate with CI/CD Give it a try: https://stepci.com https://stepci.com It's free and open-source on GitHub, built by the community! Disclaimer: I'm the original author
- gregwebs 4y ago
  Having a startup delay because the cli is written in node is a non starter for me. Hurl is written in Rust and starts up incredibly fast. It looks nice though for those that want to stick with the JS ecosystem though.
  - ushakov 4y ago
    I totally understand. I'm a big fan of Rust myself, but we decided to go with TypeScript so we could quicker iterate on ideas and introduce new features. Another reason is that our goal is to be a community-driven project and I think we both can agree that there are far more web developers using JS than any other programming language Our workflow specs are open-source as well, so if anybody wants to contribute a compatible runner written in other language - you're welcome! https://github.com/stepci/stepci/blob/main/docs/workflow-syntax.md https://github.com/stepci/stepci/blob/main/docs/workflow-syn...
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johntash 4y ago
Thanks for mentioning hurl. I just started looking into it and Insomnia (with the cli) as potential replacements for ci testing tools. hurl looks pretty simple to use, and way easier to get started with than what we're using at work currently.

mmgutz 4y ago

If you're using VS Code and only need to test REST APIs, then try "Rest Client" extension by Huachao Mao. It does everything I used Postman for, using a text file. A quality of life changer.

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SirIntruder 4y ago

Sorry for a complete tangent - I've been assuming gray OP's text in ask/show meant people were downvoting a post and it always weirded me out - now had to double check to confirm it's simply always grayed out (why though?)

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yewenjie 4y ago

If you live in Emacs, there is the amazing verb package that does the same, it supports org-mode primarily and also integrates with org-babel nicely. https://github.com/federicotdn/verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb

b5n 4y ago
Although I mainly stick with curl or requests due to muscle memory, there's also restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el. I imagine having builtin org support is super convenient, thanks for sharing.
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neop1x 4y ago
For Visual Studio Code there is a similar plugin called REST Client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...

maxloh 4y ago

What's the difference between Restfox and https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia ? Seems both of them are Postman alternative.

culi 4y ago
An even more mature project is Hoppscotch (47k stars) https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/

mmis1000 4y ago

I think the whole point of people still use postman today is a easy way the sync between users or manage user that have access to the workspace. There are a lot of alternatives without such features. But with such feature? Not too much.

humility 4y ago

what's wrong with hoppscotch?

cloverr20 4y ago

I have moved from postman to https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client and have never looked back ever since, its opens in vim and has variables to store values and can store comments too in a .txt file along with the http calls. Give this a try if you are using vim.

markcollin 4y ago

Nice to the tools come out to save us from postman bloat I have been recently trying out bruno - https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno https://www.github.com/usebruno/bruno It allows me to save my collection on my filesystem (as folders and files) and I use git to save them in my private repo

jicea 4y ago

There are really goods suggestions in this thread, I just made a compilation of all the links posted (at this time): Restfox https://restfox.dev/ https://restfox.dev/ bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno Hoppscotch https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ Hit https://hit.yolo42.com/ https://hit.yolo42.com/ HTTP Client https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-code-editor.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c... Hurl https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev Insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia Kreya https://kreya.app https://kreya.app Milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman Nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap https://github.com/davesheldon/nap Paw https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el REST Client https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient Socketfox https://socketfox.dev https://socketfox.dev Step CI https://stepci.com https://stepci.com vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb https://github.com/federicotdn/verb

bbkane 4y ago
Saved for the next time I need to test some REST! Thank you!
culi 4y ago
So the most popular open-source Postman alternatives seem to be HoppScotch (47.7k stars, 2019, Vue): https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch Insomnia (24.2k stars, 2017, React): https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia Restfox (405 stars, 2022, Vue): https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox bruno (30 stars, 2022, Tauri, Electron, Next): https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno --- You can find more here: https://alternativeto.net/software/postman/ https://alternativeto.net/software/postman/
- helloanoop 4y ago

snarfy 4y ago

If I just need to make a simple POST or PUT I'll use Firefox's dev tools network tab. Right click a request and click 'Edit and resend'. If I need more than that I'll use vscode restclient.

ndimares 4y ago

Wha's always boggled me about Postman is that it doesn't have autosave. It's 2022, what doesn't have autosaving? So thank you for adding auto-saving, huge improvement on Postman!

josephd79 4y ago

Paw for mac users, native client.