Not sure if Postman does this, but one thing I like about Insomnia is that it keeps a history of all the responses from the server, a feature I find very useful when documenting API request & responses.
People may be taking your comment as general knee-jerk electron hate but it really is something to consider.
If you're sending requests that can return very long json responses, Insomnia can lock up and force you to restart it.
Paw is a pretty good native alternative but it's macOS only, doesn't have a free tier beyond a short trial period, and has some UI quirks that made me ultimately go back to Insomnia despite the electron borne downsides.
If Insomnia could offload the request response parsing/formatting to a WebAssembly module it would be perfect.
I'm seeing that a fair number of posts in this comment thread say "I've had Insomnia and/or Postman freeze/lock up/crash with large responses."
I can't recall ever having a problem with curl and a large response.
Yes, these others are probably doing something like parsing the response and making it pretty and that's where the problem is. But just sayin'. (Also, most of the time, curl's memory usage can be measured in kilobytes. Again, just sayin'.)
For the record, I upvoted you because I find that a useful warning. I am intrigued by this app, but Electron tempers my initial impression slightly. Putting it on the back-burner for now.
For what it's worth, I use Insomnia every day with some pretty large requests and I've never had an issue with it.
With this, VSCode, Slack & Boostnote - a good portion of my daily work is done in Electron apps and I can't say I'm itching to switch to native alternatives.
Definitely appreciate how people have issues with it, but it doesn't seem like it's going away and hopefully will only get better.
When it's used well (VS Code) it works like anything else, when it isn't (Atom) it doesn't.
It might use more memory, but as developers we usually have GBs of spare RAM, isn't it there to be used anyway?
A lot of apps on Linux are available because Electron makes porting easy.
I suppose Linux users are used to apps each having their own UI quirks to a certain extent, but as a Mac user, Electron apps stick out like a sore thumb and most certainly don't "work like anything else."
Taking your "used well" example of VS Code as an example, any Mac user trying to seriously use it for more than a minute will find plenty of problems. The scroll bars are thicker and more boxy and do not auto-hide; the cursor appearance is different (the line is too thick and fades in and out instead of just blinking); the page-up and page-down behavior is different (the cursor moves rather than just staying in place; infuriating!); what gets selected when you double- or triple-click on bits of code is different. Some people can get over this sort of stuff and use it anyway. I, personally, cannot.
Been using VS Code on a mac for over a year now and literally nothing you mentioned is true for me with the exception of the scroll bar being thicker than the OS default, but it does autohide.
It has been a couple months since the last time I tried it, so I gave it a download to see if my complaints have been fixed. It looks like the only one that has (or, more likely, I misremembered) is the fading cursor - but it's still too thick, it still moves when doing pgup/pgdn, selection on clicking still behaves differently, and the scroll bar is still most definitely visible. Also, there's that weird page-high gap when scrolling to the end of a file - I had forgotten about that one.
I know VS Code is highly customizable; is it possible you installed some customizations to make it behave more Mac-like?
I was on a Mac until a month ago and I never had any of the issues you're having.
Some of the behavior you mention is also by design.
P.S.: what's a good editor for the Mac in your opinion, then? Sublime Text is good and native, but the file explorer shows folders first instead of folder content mixed like everywhere else on macOS--and that's _actually_ infuriating.
> I was on a Mac until a month ago and I never had any of the issues you're having.
You mean these things weren't happening, or they were but they didn't bug you? :P
> what's a good editor for the Mac in your opinion, then?
I use Coda 2. It does too much with its built-in terminal and MySQL client and Git client and FTP client and manuals, but it's mostly possible to just use it as a code editor and ignore the rest. (The one thing that it doesn't have built in that I wish it did is a GDB debugger.) It was pretty crashy right after High Sierra was released, but the developers eventually ironed those out.
The warning is that the app will be unnaturally resource-intensive and have an odd UI compared to a "native" app.
I won't say I didn't intend to stir the shit a little with this comment and figured I'd rightly it would be downvoted or flagged into oblivion, but now it's my most upvoted comment in the last week or so. So people seem to appreciate it a lot more than anticipated. Maybe every Electron app that shows up on HN needs an "Electron warning!" subthread.
I won't say I didn't intend to stir the shit a little with this comment and figured I'd rightly it would be downvoted or flagged into oblivion, but now it's my most upvoted comment in the last week or so.
So what? Did it in any way foster interesting discussion? No, just the opposite. It's bad and you should feel bad.
I tried Insomnia a few days ago after Postman crashed over an exceptionally large response I was receiving. Insomnia was able to give me the full response after providing a warning about its size.
Postman has been around a while so I assume they have a richer feature set, but was glad to see Insomnia handle this.
I was a long time Postman user, but find myself using Insomnia more and more in recent months.
Nothing wrong with Postman at all, but I just like Insomnia's cleaner and less cluttered UI. However, even as a regular user, sometimes I find the 'Send' button can be a lot more prominent than it is. The green '200 OK' response next to the Send button looks more like a button, and I keep inadvertently clicking on it to send my requests off!
And when starting out with a fresh workspace, the 'Create New' prompt looks like a button that you can click to create a new query, but it isn't - you still have to use the hotkey to do so. Small improvements in the UI like that will go a long way to making this my default 'go to' API testing tool.
I'm a long time Postman user as well, I'm still using the Chrome app version because I like having it open in multiple tabs - I can quickly compare responses from Dev/Prod by switching tabs.
Long-time Paw user here. I prefer it over this or Postman, but I agree that there are horses for courses. Paw lets you easily switch between a bunch of different requests, supports many auth schemes, can import the “copy as curl” right from your clipboard, can generate code for many languages (including curl), has a nice JSON viewer as a tree or as highlighted and formatted text, etc etc: https://paw.cloud
I also like the collab features and ability to save the API spec alongside the source code if you wish. They also have some cloud sharing for teams that I haven’t played with.
One nice feature of Insomnia, that I was pleasantly surprised by, was the ability to export and import your environment settings along with specific API end points. It makes getting up and running for an entire team a bit easier. Sharing is caring.
Actually, there is something wrong with Postman. It didn't affect the Chrome version but the standalone has a serious bug where it just completely ignores your hosts file. There's been a Github issue for it for over a year but they haven't bothered to fix it.
Personally, I prefer Postman but because of that bug it's basically useless for me.
Sorry about that issue. We have been working on the migration from the Chrome app to the Electron based app for a while. The final set of changes in the runtime went through in v5.4 (collection level auth, variables, scripts etc.). Changes closer to the network layer will start trickling in through soon. It seems like a long time for a bug, but we have been releasing version updates almost every 2-3 weeks. :)
I've been using it all the time for quite a while already. Generating different things like uuid's or dates in ISO format has been really useful. Same for environments. I also really like the UI.
It's like ice-cream, some people like chocolate, others like vanilla...others (insert your flavor).
I use a lot of httpie [1] and jq [2] - sometimes a GUI is nice to show other humans who might... mmhh... not like the CLI that much.. things in a more "eye pleasing way".
In my experience, the converse is true. Finder/Explorer makes only already easy tasks like cd/mv/cp/rm easier, but terminal is much better for more complicated operations, such as mass renaming, data file preprocessing, etc.
While I tend to agree with that, I would love to have a Postman/Insomia style client for SOAP. I still do some work that requires talking to (legacy-ish) enterprise applications that only do SOAP :-( On the CLI, that's just a bunch of unusable XML.
I have good experiences with the free version of SoapUI. It is branded as a test automation tool, but can also work well as a client. Just import your WSDL and it will generate requests for you.
Sometimes it's more convenient to use command line, and sometimes (especially with more complicated queries that you want to modify and fiddle with a lot) a GUI is more convenient.
I love httpie for smaller requests, but there's still situations where I have to reach for a GUI. Adding 4 headers and 9 fields in a JSON request body is not as fun in httpie if you find yourself having to change fields and run the request again
I also like using mitmproxy combined with proxychains4 for monitoring outgoing requests of apps I'm building, especially when using a third-party library to use a service (like Azure services). It's also good for seeing what any application is doing.
I have been working on an alternative to Postman and Curl with a modern terminal interface. The idea isn't fully fleshed out yet, but I really like using it when I am designing an API. It forces me to think about discoverability and encourages me to provide links in the response rather than encoding the API route structure into a client.
I switched to Insomnia after a few years of frustration with Postman crashing and its annoying tab behavior. The only thing I miss is a display for # of matches when searching!
Great! What I couldn't find is: is it possible to get output from one command and store it as variable for use in another command? My example is simple: I need to get a token once, and then provide it as a header to all subsequent requests. The bugger is unfortunately valid only for a limited amount of time (some 10 minutes), which makes exploration a bit tricky, and I don't particularly like running search and replace all the time...
I've been using insomnia daily for something like a year now, it's excellent. I would ask the developer to stop putting pop-up messages in it though. I use it because it's the cleanest REST client I've found, and it's extremely jarring to have the otherwise exceptional UX broken by a "latest release" popup.
It's really nice tool indeed, I much prefer this to Paw and Postman strictly due to UX. Less tabs, less popups etc, easier to navigate. I don't mind Electron either.
I know it's shameless plug but I can't resist sharing my own tool that I created for monitoring REST apis, if anyone is interested: http://www.apilope.com
Been using Insomnia for a few months now, some things I really like:
1. Env switching. I believe this is available on other clients, but it feels very intuitive in insomnia.
2. The ease of using results from other calls and making method chains. When testing something locally, I can make a POST call and then click on my GET call and have it implicitly GET the id that was just created.
3. Computed values -- putting in uuids or timestamps for each new call without having to change them. I looked at the api and the code to add your own seems pretty straightforward.
4. Input data types are toggleable, but the form stays the same. This bugged the shit out of me with Postman: I'd fill out a form with my content body only to find I had marked the wrong content type, switched it, and saw Postman present me with a blank form.
110 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] thread[0]: https://www.getpostman.com/docs/postman/collections/data_for...
https://github.com/mlabouardy/swaggymnia
Postman also has bulk edit of form requests..
I feel like postman is more fully featured so I'm sticking with it for now.
It's not bad at all, Postman's UI is _slightly_ more intuitive, but Insomnia's is good, too.
I use it because they offer a .deb installer and Postman doesn't offer a package installer for Linux.
Intuitiveness is very much in the eye of the beholder ;)
[1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signature-versi...
If you're sending requests that can return very long json responses, Insomnia can lock up and force you to restart it.
Paw is a pretty good native alternative but it's macOS only, doesn't have a free tier beyond a short trial period, and has some UI quirks that made me ultimately go back to Insomnia despite the electron borne downsides.
If Insomnia could offload the request response parsing/formatting to a WebAssembly module it would be perfect.
I can't recall ever having a problem with curl and a large response.
Yes, these others are probably doing something like parsing the response and making it pretty and that's where the problem is. But just sayin'. (Also, most of the time, curl's memory usage can be measured in kilobytes. Again, just sayin'.)
I'll tolerate a good electron app, but I'll always prefer native.
With this, VSCode, Slack & Boostnote - a good portion of my daily work is done in Electron apps and I can't say I'm itching to switch to native alternatives.
Definitely appreciate how people have issues with it, but it doesn't seem like it's going away and hopefully will only get better.
When it's used well (VS Code) it works like anything else, when it isn't (Atom) it doesn't.
It might use more memory, but as developers we usually have GBs of spare RAM, isn't it there to be used anyway? A lot of apps on Linux are available because Electron makes porting easy.
I think it's a great technology.
Taking your "used well" example of VS Code as an example, any Mac user trying to seriously use it for more than a minute will find plenty of problems. The scroll bars are thicker and more boxy and do not auto-hide; the cursor appearance is different (the line is too thick and fades in and out instead of just blinking); the page-up and page-down behavior is different (the cursor moves rather than just staying in place; infuriating!); what gets selected when you double- or triple-click on bits of code is different. Some people can get over this sort of stuff and use it anyway. I, personally, cannot.
I know VS Code is highly customizable; is it possible you installed some customizations to make it behave more Mac-like?
Some of the behavior you mention is also by design.
P.S.: what's a good editor for the Mac in your opinion, then? Sublime Text is good and native, but the file explorer shows folders first instead of folder content mixed like everywhere else on macOS--and that's _actually_ infuriating.
You mean these things weren't happening, or they were but they didn't bug you? :P
> what's a good editor for the Mac in your opinion, then?
I use Coda 2. It does too much with its built-in terminal and MySQL client and Git client and FTP client and manuals, but it's mostly possible to just use it as a code editor and ignore the rest. (The one thing that it doesn't have built in that I wish it did is a GDB debugger.) It was pretty crashy right after High Sierra was released, but the developers eventually ironed those out.
So you're using an outdated editor because you don't like VS Code's scrollbars (which can be themed, btw)?
It's a dead product.
https://library.panic.com/releasenotes/coda2/
It hasn't changed in 5 years.
I mean, by your standard, how much has vi changed over the last 35 years or so? Is vi dead?
Totally different things.
For what it is worth, I'm on one now and am experiencing the same issues.
I won't say I didn't intend to stir the shit a little with this comment and figured I'd rightly it would be downvoted or flagged into oblivion, but now it's my most upvoted comment in the last week or so. So people seem to appreciate it a lot more than anticipated. Maybe every Electron app that shows up on HN needs an "Electron warning!" subthread.
So what? Did it in any way foster interesting discussion? No, just the opposite. It's bad and you should feel bad.
Six subthreads and seventeen total subcomments so far, so apparently so. Exclusive of this particular subthread, of course.
I don't mean to "shit on" Electron, it has it's uses - I just avoid it when possible.
(I'm not affiliated with them, just like the product)
So nice to capture a flow of commands and notes in a single plain text file
https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia
Nothing wrong with Postman at all, but I just like Insomnia's cleaner and less cluttered UI. However, even as a regular user, sometimes I find the 'Send' button can be a lot more prominent than it is. The green '200 OK' response next to the Send button looks more like a button, and I keep inadvertently clicking on it to send my requests off!
And when starting out with a fresh workspace, the 'Create New' prompt looks like a button that you can click to create a new query, but it isn't - you still have to use the hotkey to do so. Small improvements in the UI like that will go a long way to making this my default 'go to' API testing tool.
Does Insonmia or other REST clients support tabs?
I also like the collab features and ability to save the API spec alongside the source code if you wish. They also have some cloud sharing for teams that I haven’t played with.
Personally, I prefer Postman but because of that bug it's basically useless for me.
I use a lot of httpie [1] and jq [2] - sometimes a GUI is nice to show other humans who might... mmhh... not like the CLI that much.. things in a more "eye pleasing way".
As usual with these tools YMMV.
[1] https://httpie.org/ [2] https://stedolan.github.io/jq/
Not for other humans, for me as well.
It has all those shiny colors, icons, columns, drag & drop, that makes it easier and faster, when you have more complicated task.
I guess it all depends, but GUI in general is a step forward.
https://www.soapui.org
Sometimes it's more convenient to use command line, and sometimes (especially with more complicated queries that you want to modify and fiddle with a lot) a GUI is more convenient.
[1] https://mitmproxy.org/ [2] https://github.com/rofl0r/proxychains-ng
Moving App 'Insomnia.app' to '/Applications/Insomnia.app'. Password:
I can't find the app anywhere after sudo gave up because I don't have rights. I did get this nice message though:
https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia/releases/tag/v5.12.4
Wonderful!
https://imgur.com/gallery/jCNXx
https://gitlab.com/deckar01/ctf-api/tree/master/ctf_client
https://httpie.org/doc
Super easy to use, and it's trivial to save and organize common requests since...it's all just text :)
Supports variables as well. Check out the readme for examples. Can't recommend it highly enough.
[0] https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
thank you, guys :)
1. Env switching. I believe this is available on other clients, but it feels very intuitive in insomnia.
2. The ease of using results from other calls and making method chains. When testing something locally, I can make a POST call and then click on my GET call and have it implicitly GET the id that was just created.
3. Computed values -- putting in uuids or timestamps for each new call without having to change them. I looked at the api and the code to add your own seems pretty straightforward.
4. Input data types are toggleable, but the form stays the same. This bugged the shit out of me with Postman: I'd fill out a form with my content body only to find I had marked the wrong content type, switched it, and saw Postman present me with a blank form.