The API Tooling Crisis: Why developers are abandoning Postman and its clones?
45 points by dhruvp
45 points by dhruvp
I think the problem is that UI for making api calls is such a simple problem that you can’t make supernormal profits off it. A decent product could command a small fee. But VCs, as the Grapes of Wrath says of banks, cannot accept moderate incomes on a human scale.
Perhaps the bigger problem is that there is a financial layer that exists on the assumption that another productive sector (farms, computers) can somewhat reliably produce outsized profits. We’re at the point where just because it’s computerized there’s no reason to believe a product will unlock the massive order of magnitude productivity gains that will make people want to pay for it or spend all their time staring at it.
I always have hope when I click on that link, but I can read that they don't owe me shit https://justuse.org/#:~:text=More%20coming%20soon%2E%20Or%20not%2E%20I%20don%27t%20owe%20you%20shit
This author and Carson need to collaborate. Or don't, they don't owe me :-D
curl would be fine for one-off requests. If the intent is to chain multiple requests and share them across a team, something like hurl would be a better option.
Something I tried : https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden
look, friend, I'm pretty sure your link is sufficiently represented in this thread without having to reply to every comment to further link to it. Based on how hard you're hammering this link it almost feel like some kind of campaign or something, and that's not even counting the existing representation in your /t/show submission from a few days ago
As the original creator of Insomnia, this post hit hard. It was tough watching the tool I spent years building degrade since accepting an acquisition offer in 2019.
After going down a very similar process as the author started over and built Yaak [1]
I'd love some feedback if you get a chance to try it.
[1] https://yaak.app
Oh neat, I liked Insomnia but then it progressively started introducing accounts and workspaces and all this other "stuff" that wasn't "I just want to make an API request".
I tried out Bruno a bit after they launched but I found it a little too wonky, with its custom bru format and that.
I'll be looking forward to giving Yaak a spin!
I switched to Yaak almost a year ago, before the repo was even public. Happy user since then. Great tool!
Do you have a quick answer in your pocket (even one that you could just link to) for why someone might rather use yaak than bruno?
It's maybe a bit out of date now, but this is a great starting point https://yaak.app/blog/bruno-alternative
Hello. I'll answer you so you can correct me if I'm wrong.
From what I understand, Bruno allows commercial use and Yaak requires a license for commercial use.
My employer is very jealous of licenses so they have only allowed Bruno (even though their client uses Postman and Insomnia).
Yes, Yaak requires a commercial license.
However, this only applies to the prebuilt binaries downloaded from the website. If you want, you can run the open-source code directly for free, for commercial use, without purchasing a license.
I was genually horrified how big a company running postman is. I had no clue what they are doing there, but I noticed that it's getting harder and harder to use.
Nowadays, I just use curl/yaak (but mostly just curl).
Zero login wall. The tool functions completely offline without forced account creation or mandatory cloud synchronization.
Postman only exists because of this artificial moat. For offensive work, I use ZAP; for building backends, I don't use a proxy at all, but curl, Firefox, and a backend-specific test harness. There is no good justification for using paid tools for this purpose; the marginal cost of a high-quality proxy is already zero.
https://voiden.md/ has no login - we do check that box and also not dependent on cloud.
I think that you've misunderstood. I'm not endorsing Postman-style approaches at all; I'm saying that Postman in particular wouldn't exist if it didn't have a login wall.
the httpie cli tool is pretty cool, and open-source, under something resembling a BSD license.
If you need GUI, I think https://yaak.app/ is one of the better alternatives.
But I've been using the .http file format in git with e.g. https://httpyac.github.io/ to execute.
I keep wanting to use hurl, but the lack of IDE support is a real bummer. So I either use httpyac or rest-client mostly these days.
Hi maintainer of Hurl. Thanks for the feedback, we definitively have to improve the Hurl IDE story. I fell good editor integrations is the way to go (compared to a dedicated UI).
We're really focused, so things can take some times to implement but there are real little improvements over time: GitHub now has Hurl syntax coloring in Markdown snippets and *.hurl files for instance.
Is there no lsp available for hurl? Its pretty easy to build a very small POC lsp implementation with lsp-types and some other crates used in the rust analyzer crate
I've always just used https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el.
Yeah, I've found that to be pretty good. Also ob-restclient for embedding restclient.el requests and responses in my org-mode notes for whatever I'm working on.
Years before postman existed, I made a socket client UI in java swing, which I used to debug the response of PHP applications. Then I wanted to script such tests and found out this cli application called curl which did everything I needed.
I felt embarassed for having built a UI for something that clearly didn't need one.
I guess it's all a matter of marketing.
For figuring out how to use an API, Bruno is the most common thing I use and see others use. To the extent that I've noticed any lack of polish, it hasn't mattered. But I also haven't really noticed it.
When it gets to the writing and running tests part, I just write it into my system tests. (Usually using pytest on my stuff, but I don't see a postman-like thing having a role in many kinds of automated tests...)
When I'm doing pentesting, it's kind of the same thing. I'll use the shiny client to iterate and figure out how the API works, but for the real tests, I'm either bring scripts or putting it together using a browser's developer tools on the fly. Depending on the test it's frequently the latter thing, 'cause it's a pain to get custom tools into certain engagements.
I don't see them as abandoned so much as just not worth building out much more than they are. They're certainly not worth postman's or insomnia's paywalls.
Interesting ! Maybe try out https://voiden.md sometime. We designed in a different way than Bruno. Open-sourced it some days back.
This is precisely the reason I started working on Slumber. Insomnia just got a little too shitty for me to put up with. It doesn't check all the boxes that the post asks for, but it is file-system centric and intended for VCS-based collaboration. It's a TUI though, so it doesn't help if you're attached to using a GUI :P
I’ve taken to using curl for api testing, for things that require more automation e.g. obtaining a token for authentication before hitting the required endpoint I write bash scripts.
Postman is a pretty interface but ultimately using curl and learning enough shell scripting to get by is likely the better solution for most.
I had a coworker who used the Google Chrome App version of Postman. It gained the "Chrome Apps are now deprecated!" banner and he continued using it fine for like a year after deprecation. I wonder if he still uses it to this day.
Tools are becoming less significant over time, while developers are increasingly worried about making a living, since anyone can create something nowadays. The space feels crowded and unclear, making it much harder for real quality to shine.
I have only seen the json collections, and some screenshots or recordings from some colleagues using it, I can't believe you need a login or pay for it
These are not particularly complicated tools either. I'd make one myself if I weren't ridiculously busy.
Another alternative shared here before. Unfortunately it can't import insomnia files; it uses its own file format.
https://lobste.rs/s/sjlvuy/cartero_free_http_client_test_your_apis
to this day I write little bash scripts with curl for most of my testing. I keep them in a small git repo of adhoc scripts and sometimes even create little CLIs out of 'em. Once you build a quick template, building a request is really trivial. By the time I outgrow the bash script, I've started development on the CLI.
What a timing xD. I just downloaded bruno today. So far so good, specially the ability to have a version history and everything is a file approach.
No mention of RapidAPI on macOS? used to be called Paw. I've preferred it over Postman and others for years.
Something that I worked on to solve this : https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden
Respectfully, the web page is much better than the readme at explaining the big idea here. You might want to put some of that in the readme.