11 ms·

Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

351 points by andyfleming 10y ago

liveify 10y ago
It's not cheap but it is one of my most used dev tools that is not an editor/IDE. Highly recommended.
ianunruh 10y ago
How is this different from Postman? It seems very similar, but Postman is free and has other really awesome features (like being able to export tests and run them in the command line).
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  The main thing for me was that it's a proper native app. It works really well, takes advantage of the native OS APIs and is a better product because of it.
  - doomtop 10y ago
    Hypernap is a proper native app and less than a tenth the cost of Paw... http://gethypernap.com/ http://gethypernap.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hypernap/id795069997 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hypernap/id795069997
    - andyfleming 10y ago
      But it isn't as nice and it doesn't have any solution for cloud/team syncing, right?
      - doomtop 10y ago
        Commenter mentioned OSX native app being the main thing for them. It is an OSX native app. But no, it's not a good team solution. And I'd agree that Paw is subjectively more "nice", but I'm not sure I'd agree it's 12x more nice... If it were $9.99 instead of $49.99, I would have already purchased it. As it stands, I'm sticking with Hypernap, which gets the job done for my needs.
        SwellJoe 10y ago
        It doesn't have to be 12x better. It only has to save you $45 worth of time more than a $5 alternative, or $50 more than a free alternative. Most engineers are paid on the order of $30-$150/hour, depending on whether full-time, contractor, level of experience, etc. So, it has to save about 1.5 hours over the alternatives to be worth the price. I don't know if it does that, as I've never used it, and don't use macOS. There are other things it could save instead of or in addition to time: Hassle, maybe it doesn't have any external dependencies or complicated setup; stress, maybe it works reliably while others are buggy and unreliable; etc. Again, I don't know. And, I tend to choose OSS solutions, even when it costs me more time/hassle/stress. But, there's a number of reasons one might choose a more expensive tool that does roughly the same job as lower cost alternatives, and it might be the right economic decision to do so.
    - developer2 10y ago
      Hypernap may be a native app, but it's certainly not beautiful or fully featured. It uses the most basic interface elements thrown together in a messy soup. I have immense respect for people who manage to develop native apps, but when the interface looks like it was implemented as someone's very first experiment in XCode... well, there's a reason you don't pay much. I don't understand why developers throw their arms in the air over pricing. Try out the app; if it has everything you will ever need out of such a tool and it greatly improves your productivity every single day... a one-time $50 payment is nothing. It's the cost of going out for dinner one evening.
  - ubertaco 10y ago
    Which to me in this case just means "I can only run this on my work Macbook, and not on my personal Linux or Windows machines, or on a Chromebook."
    - andyfleming 10y ago
      That is a major advantage of postman, but the reality for me is that I use an API client like this when I'm building and API. I'm on my mac and Paw is the best, most productive option. I've been giving feedback to the postman team and hope to see it continue to improve. The electron desktop app was a big step forward, but there is still lots of room to improve.
- andyfleming 10y ago
  The UX is 1000x better. Faster load up, more intuitive keyboard/mouse navigation, etc etc.
- andyfleming 10y ago
  Postman isn't free if you are using team syncing. They are both $X/user/month.
tommynicholas 10y ago
Paw is amazing
ecaroth 10y ago
I purchased Paw about 6 months ago and used it heavily, until recently I have ran into multiple situations where it didn't properly include custom headers I specified into the request, and was causing odd errors that I assumed were the fault of the code I was testing (happened in multiple different languages/projects). I have since started using Postman, but would love to go back to Paw since I appreciated some if it's features (such as being able to save an API definition into the github repo for sharing with other devs) EDIT - didn't realize this post was for Paw 3, which just became available. Installing now and excited to try it!
dchuk 10y ago
Interesting, this is the first time I've seen a domain with the .cloud extension. I wonder how many other companies are going to follow suit? Regarding the app, Paw is friggin amazing. I was lucky to get it back when it was much cheaper, but it's definitely still worth the $49 even now. The team stuff is interesting too, as me and my guys share our exports all the time.
andyfleming 10y ago
I'm having a conversation with the CEO of Postman on twitter now about ways Postman could improve: https://twitter.com/andyfleming/status/759134340185862144 https://twitter.com/andyfleming/status/759134340185862144 For now though, I'm super excited about the new Paw app.
andyfleming 10y ago
The big difference with Paw 3 that is allowing my team to make the switch is team syncing.
karlshea 10y ago
I've been using Paw 2 for a project in the last couple of months and it's totally amazing. Very excited to give the new version a try!
eddieroger 10y ago
I've used Paw for a few years since I started getting inconsistent Postman results thanks to Chrome cookies, and I haven't looked back. It's really a fantastic tool that is part of my daily life as an API guy. The dev, Micha, is super helpful via email and has even incorporated feedback when the app didn't work the way I expected (like sending request body on GET). I would honestly buy it again if updates weren't free.
- mittsh 10y ago
  Thanks, Eddie! That's really a kind feedback! But we're a whole team now ;)
  - eddieroger 10y ago
    Well cheers to the whole team then! Keep it up.
hugocbp 10y ago
Great news! I use Paw all the time while exploring new APIs. It is a great piece of software. EDIT: Wow! Just saw that the upgrade to v3 is free for v2 users! Nice surprise!
pimlottc 10y ago
Looks cool! Probably should specify Web API tool, though; there are plenty of APIs that have nothing to do with HTTP.
- mittsh 10y ago
  I'm with you on this, the wide use of the word "API" to designate Web/HTTP APIs is wrong. But we have to admit that if you talk with someone saying "we're build an API that does X", everyone will understand it's a web service, not a C++ library ;) So in the end words are just ways to communicate ideas…so we went for the simpler "API" wording. -Micha (from Paw)
jen20 10y ago
Paw is a really great product, I've been using it for a long time now. I _really_ wish they would combine this with traffic capture - similar to Fiddler on Windows. Charles does the trick, but it's a mess to set up for proxying HTTPS traffic.
- hishnash 10y ago
  Traffic capture is definitely something we are looking into. Through to be honest it would most likely be a companion app rather than directly embedded within Paw --matthaus (@hishnash) Backend syncing dev at paw.cloud
cwisecarver 10y ago
Paw is excellent. I've used it for years. The one feature I hope for in v3 is the ability to import cookies from Safari/Chrome/etc.
avitzurel 10y ago
I've been using Postman for a couple of year now if I recall correctly. It's an absolute timesaver for me when developing and using an API. Paw looks really good. I'll definitely give that a try, especially if the team sharing features are good.
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  I've used Postman on and off but I just find the UI more burdensome than it's worth and use one of the more simple rest clients and curl for when I'm really trying to string together some complicated requests. Paw looks gorgeous and very nicely featured. Let's see how it works on Monday against the Niantic APIs :)
  - developer2 10y ago
    Postman is decent. But it takes too many click to do things like managing environment variables. Then there's the double-scrolling issue when reading responses which is atrocious; the response text is placed in a scrollable field - and that field has the parent window which also scrollable. Having to operate nested scrollbars to read every single response - which is the most frequent task you are performing - ruins the entire application. I hadn't heard of Paw, but based on the screenshots and positive reviews in the comments, I'll be giving the trial a go. Fingers crossed!
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Used it about a year. Happy with it. Has a few nice shortcuts (though can't speak to how those compare to Postman)
aphextron 10y ago
This looks amazing and desperately needed. Postman is ok, but to finally have a proper native app with a modern UI is fantastic.
Walkman 10y ago
It even supports SSL client certificates!
jameslk 10y ago
For those who want something that works really well, with a very nice UI and is free, I would highly recommend Insomnia for Google Chrome (it functions as a standalone app outside of Chrome). https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/insomnia-rest-client/gmodihnfibbjdecbanmpmbmeffnmloel?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/insomnia-rest-clie...
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  Didn't know about this. Thanks!
- andyfleming 10y ago
  Hadn't heard of this, but I am familiar with mashape. Their stuff is solid. Though, it looks like it is in beta, and I don't see any way to do cloud/team syncing.
  - jameslk 10y ago
    The latest version (3.0) appears to be in beta, but 2.x is stable and I've been using it for at least a year. It doesn't have cloud/team syncing (at least in 2.x), but it does allow you to export request groups as JSON which can be shared/versioned. For being free and cross-platform, that seems good enough for me.
    - andyfleming 10y ago
      Postman went through a similar progression. For me I need team/cloud syncing that goes beyond shipping around a JSON file. Although it looks like the new PAW team syncing might be leveraging git behind the scenes.
    - gschier 10y ago
      Hi there. I'm the creator of insomnia and just want to say thanks for the recommendation. So far, 3.0 ditches the Chrome dependency and provides a much nicer UI, but more advanced features like sync and versioning are in the works! ~ Gregory
- 10y ago
throwaway745234 10y ago
Bought Paw on the Mac App Store a while back. I wonder if this update will come to me as well, or that I need to repurchase. For now I can't find Paw 3 there at all; perhaps they stopped using the MAS?
- SkyMarshal 10y ago
  Sketch (https://www.sketchapp.com/ https://www.sketchapp.com/) stopped using MAS in the past year too. Not the best trend for Apple.
  - tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
    But a well-documented one. GJ, Apple. You're alienating everybody and going back to the cesspool you wallowed in throughout the '90s. Jony Ive's pathetic, regressive designs should launch Apple's coffin ship nicely in the consumer realm, as well.
- lnikkila 10y ago
  Update is free. Instructions on how to migrate your App Store purchase are here: https://paw.cloud/docs/getting-started/migrate-from-appstore https://paw.cloud/docs/getting-started/migrate-from-appstore
jadengore 10y ago
I've owned Paw for a while, and I find it much more user-friendly than Postman. It's not for everyone, sure, but the developer has put in good work and you won't regret a purchase.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  I bought Paw because the latest version of Postman went to absolute shit. Never looked back.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    Yeah, seems like the UX has been degrading. Still really like the functionality, though.
  - boie0025 10y ago
    Yeah I went hunting for a new API software for the same reason.. I wound up purchasing Paw for my team. The big selling point for me was the ability to define a request, and then use data from that request in other requests (the dynamic data). And... the UI is wildly better IMO. Thanks to Paw for making a great piece of software that's not a pain to use!
a-b 10y ago
I'm curious if there is anything in Paw that curl or siege can't do.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  This is a UI for APIs, curl and siege are CLIs. You know the difference, quit trolling.
  - smaudet 10y ago
    So, I'm not trolling - I don't like UIs if they don't provide more functionality than data entry, I think they are counter productive. So, seriously, what advantages does it provide, beyond being 'accessible' to people with cli allergies. I'm curious.
davidhariri 10y ago
I've been using Paw for two months now. Much better than Postman IMO. Best to the developers
tuxracer 10y ago
Would love to see built-in HAR import/export
- josefdlange 10y ago
  AFAIK its import/export features are plugin based. Write it!
  - mittsh 10y ago
    That's very true :) You can write custom extensions for Paw, and they can be then shared with the community. But anyway, there's already a HAR importer, you can install it here as an extension https://paw.cloud/extensions/HARImporter https://paw.cloud/extensions/HARImporter Also, we're working on a powerful API format transformer that we will release more officially soon, but it's already on GitHub: https://github.com/luckymarmot/api-flow https://github.com/luckymarmot/api-flow That will allow us to release exporters for Swagger, RAML, HAR soon as well as formats of other clients like Postman and DHC Client. If you're curious about writing an exporter/generator though here are some steps: https://paw.cloud/docs/extensions/create-code-generator https://paw.cloud/docs/extensions/create-code-generator (Disclaimer, Paw guy here…)
    - merb 10y ago
      Extension APIs mostly are a minus. It's mostly used as an excuse for not shipping features.
      - hishnash 10y ago
        We are making over half of the available extensions, it's a good way to ship small features to users that need them without a full blown update. Also it keeps the app simple for users that only need to key feature set. Check out our GitHub: https://github.com/luckymarmot https://github.com/luckymarmot We have someone full time on the extention now, in addtion to other team mebembers spending time as well (disclaimer member of Paw team here..)
      - 10y ago
hkjgkjy 10y ago
Looks cool :-). If there is any Emacs hackers looking for a way to make and document api calls, I recommend Restclient-mode[0]. Emacs Rocks! Episode on Restclient-mode[1]. [0] https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el [1] http://emacsrocks.com/e15.html http://emacsrocks.com/e15.html
KuiN 10y ago
As a (somewhat stubborn) adherent to httpie | jq, what do I gain from my $50 going to Paw?
- theonemind 10y ago
  I'm a pretty heavy RESTful API user (feels like what I spend most of my day doing a lot of times), a pretty heavy Paw user and pretty well versed with its feature set, and on the CLI side, curl | jq. So I think I can actually probably answer this pretty well. Paw helps me compose arbitrary calls faster. It also helps me just keep track of and search API calls really easily, just by searching the request list. I have an API call right there, with the JSON body, and I don't have to pull up the API docs. It's just way better than having a bunch of little shell scripts for these API calls, and better than having a big, ugly, stupid text file full of API calls, because I can execute them, and it really helps in composing them. It just helps with a lot of little random stuff. Like, if you tell it you're doing a JSON-body form post, and you've got quote marks in there, it'll get those quotes escaped right to get it embedded in the JSON. If you're a heavy RESTful API user, I'd say just give it a try for a month and see if you feel like it's worth it. I thought it was. There's command history, and if you're executing calls multiple times in a row and might want to see what changed between them later, the history is great. You can scroll back in your terminal, sure, but you tend to close terminal windows and lose the output. It just keeps everything glued together, it's really much more coherent than trying to throw around a lot of disparate API calls in a terminal with curl (or httpie.) That being said, I do find it to be complementary to curl | jq. For one, the "keypath" filter in the http exchange pane of Paw doesn't take anything close to a full jq-like syntax. I pretty frequently use the "curl" code generator (it's got an httpie code generator as well, but it doesn't seem that one is as good at shell-quoting edge cases. Not sure who maintains that extension and if it's open-source, but if you love it, you might be able to help fix it if it interferes with your workflow) to copy out the call I composed, and even executed in Paw, so that I can do some jq mangling. (Or i could just copy out the json body if I didn't want to re-execute the call.) If slinging RESTful API calls is a significant part of your day, you're almost certainly going to find value in something like Paw. It's got a 1 month free trial. I tried it, and didn't really plan to buy it, but a month ended, and I was using it and liked it.
josefdlange 10y ago
I love using Paw. I'm no longer in the building phase of my service, but when I was defining my API and testing endpoints, Paw was critical in the process. My main feature request (and I'm not sure if any competitor does this, so please inform me if it exists somewhere): While Paw allows me to export code, which is cool and all, it would be very interesting to allow me to compose workflows, like, say Automator in macOS, including assertions, so that I could essentially compose and export integration tests with Paw. It'd be neat to see some more generally API-definition features hit Paw, or maybe a companion app that plays nicely with Paw to do the definition half of things, compatible with Swagger and whatnot. Clearly not a well-thought-out idea, but I think there's space in Paw's domain for some form of what I'm talking about.
- andyfleming 10y ago
  This is similar to Postman's test runner feature. You can export a collection of requests and even write simple assertions in javascript. Although it looks like Paw has potential for something similar with its extensions. It already has some sort of javascript availability. https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/make-your-app-extensible-with-javascript-core-7074061f2b05#.vmjlukl51 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/make-your-app-extens...
- mittsh 10y ago
  We have actually two ideas in this area. First, as you mentioned, assertion testing. We've recently published a workaround (as a joke, but it's actually working :D) https://blog.paw.cloud/posts/secret-path-to-paw-assertions/ https://blog.paw.cloud/posts/secret-path-to-paw-assertions/ but a real alternative is coming next. Second, we are currently brainstorming around the idea of a good automation app. So somehow the two ideas may merge. We're not sure yet what would make sense for automation, but for assertions testing, for sure it's in the pipeline! -Micha from Paw
  - josefdlange 10y ago
    Love your interest in the community. Thanks for hearing me out!
- 10y ago
enahs-sf 10y ago
Looks much better than the curls I am currently pasting to my teammates.
bjoernw 10y ago
Jmeter is free and has more features https://jmeter.apache.org/ https://jmeter.apache.org/ Though I agree it might be overkill for simple use cases.
discordance 10y ago
Just a heads up to the product owner - the site needs some work for mobile users: https://imgur.com/a/akNqP https://imgur.com/a/akNqP
- mittsh 10y ago
  Yeah, we're aware of this :( we need to spend time polishing those styles! -Micha from Paw
flyosity 10y ago
I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is an extremely high quality, native Mac app, made by a small team trying to provide for their families by building software for other software engineers like all of us. It's a paid tool but it's probably the most sophisticated API testing tool that exists. I've been a completely satisfied Paw user for over a year. It's been invaluable to me and I use it constantly. It is worth the money. It is more sophisticated with a far better user interface than anything else out there. Use the trial, buy it if you like it, but this pattern of comments saying Check Out Product Z, It's Like Product Y But Free (And Less Good) makes me hate coming to HN.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  I've observed a very similar thing for awhile now. I'm to the point where I rarely delve into the comments anymore. I've noticed what you've seen about product announcements, or people just generally being contrarian for no reason that adds value to a discussion. I'm eagerly waiting for the day that I see this happen, and I mean literally: "Scientists find a new reason to explain why the sky appears blue." HN: I know nothing about science but the sky is definitely azure, not blue.
- elmigranto 10y ago
  I don't really see how any of the facts you mention makes linking similar tools here a bad thing? Unless someone's bashing on Paw for being a paid software in a disrespectful manner, I think it is fine to link to others, why not?
- cwp 10y ago
  Yeah. I bought Paw and love it. It's easily paid for its self in time saved.
- swilliams 10y ago
  I was a happy Postman user for a long time. I tried Paw on a lark (the importance of free trials) and loved it. Totally worth the money to me, and I've only scratched the surface with it. I especially like the plugins ecosystem.
batbomb 10y ago
I was worried for a second somebody brought the Physics Analysis Workstation back to life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_Analysis_Workstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_Analysis_Workstation
mightykan 10y ago
Why do I need to create an account with an email and password to purchase this if it’s not a subscription service? To add insult to injury, I have to agree to some Terms of Service that probably indemnifies this company from doing whatever they want with my data. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas? The Mac App Store is absolutely horrible (lots of bugs, slow, inconsistent, almost unusable, absurd certificate expiration issues that are completely embarrassing for a company like Apple, etc.) and Apple has completely ignored all developers who use it... but this is exactly why I always prefer buying from it. I don’t want some nobody developer harvesting my information, and selling/renting it off to some who knows who either now or some years down the line when the company folds. Please have respect for your potential paying customers and drop these kinds of practices. Other than recovering a potentially lost license key, there is absolutely nothing I need from you, including any and all “news or updates”, after I have purchased the app. Therefore you should only really need some unique value (like the hash of an email address) for that.
- brennebeck 10y ago
  Honest question: what apps that you purchase don't ask for your name or email?
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    Asking for an email is one thing. The problem is needing to create an account for downloading. I certainly didn't need an account when I bought a license for Eagle.
  - mightykan 10y ago
    Asking for email, and sometimes name, is fine. Forcing me to register is absurd. There are lots of “indy” software developers that don’t play these games.
    - brennebeck 10y ago
      Fair point. I wasn't aware you had to register a full account to start a trial. That definitely seems a bit much and I don't see the usefulness as getting the user's email would be just as effective for conversion.
jamestnz 10y ago
Paw is a great tool, but I can also attest to the excellent support of the developer. I made a mistake when uninstalling it off my old Mac, and found myself unable to activate the serial on my new Mac. Micha replied personally, took me at my word regard the issue I was having, and immediately added a second seat to my serial for free, as the simplest way to guarantee I'd never have the problem again. I appreciated that. Secondly, there are indeed many similar tools, but I've found that Paw in particular has well-thought-out implementations of a number of useful features (cookies, JSON parsing, auth methods, history) as well as a neat way of managing requests across environments e.g. dev machine vs test server vs production API. Paw isn't the only tool I use when testing/developing API endpoints, but I find it to be the most featureful while also playing nice as a Mac app, with a decent UI and the expected things like remembering my previous window positions/states the next time I launch it.
- brennebeck 10y ago
  Exactly. My interactions with support have all been fantastic and the app is, for me, by far the most featureful and robust tool in this space. And they're continually adding additional features.
kodisha 10y ago
Best feature of paw (idk if it was intentional) - fetch huge json - collapse first level fields - leave node/subnode of interest open - change backend - refresh paw, and see changes way faster, coz it will show only open subtree really useful for large json responses! (Postman dies on those)
xenadu02 10y ago
I had the pleasure of emailing with Paw's creator when he was thinking of applying to YC and introducing him to the founders of PlanGrid. I can vouch for Paw; it's an awesome tool.
morgante 10y ago
I've used Postman for a while, but I keep running into a strange issue where it somehow shares cookies with Chrome. It's proven very annoying for testing certain APIs (because the cookies override whichever auth headers I'm sending), so I've been looking for an alternative. Paw definitely looks promising. The pricing seems a little steep though.
idontgiveafuck 10y ago
Okie okie, people bought this, so what? "I am professional" "I am support the dev team" "I am a great developer with great salary" "It's better than anything" ---------------------------------------- CMON, ITS JUST A TOOL AND CMON, DO YOU REALLY NEED it WITH YOU EXTREMMEMEMEME AMAZING PROJECT?
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
EDIT: I found more info. They're using RNCryptor. Hopefully not the C++ bindings! https://github.com/RNCryptor/RNCryptor-cpp/issues/2 https://github.com/RNCryptor/RNCryptor-cpp/issues/2
- hishnash 10y ago
  We are using the RNCryptor Obj-C api. ( matthaus of Paw here )
greggman 10y ago
This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be negative but I'm really confused. It would seem like best practices is that all of this is part of your automated tests. Tests that are checked in to your repo and written in code and part of your CI. How does a native app that is OSX only fit in that scenario? Or maybe I'm not understanding it?
- brianpan 10y ago
  I'm guessing this is more for in development or debugging issues.
- ing33k 10y ago
  imo Paw is not an automated API testing tool. You can use it to explore/browse API's. Developers after creating a new endpoint or after editing an existing endpoint want ways to easily send a properly constructed request and visually check the returned response (mostly json these days ). There's a feature in Paw which let's you generate code in multiple languages for any request that's already in Paw. May be people are using it as a starting point to write tests.
- mittsh 10y ago
  As ing33k mentioned, Paw isn't an automated testing tool (at least not yet), but rather an app where you can experiment with your or others APIs to check if things are working, and have a visual feedback/confirmation of what you're doing. But that's actually a great question. We are asking ourselves the same here at Paw: should our app offer a testing/assertions feature? Our own server backend is in Django using the Django REST Framework (it's an amazing tool btw) and clearly unit testing done inside the web framework is the right thing to do. Good frameworks have mocking libraries, and unit tests allows you to exercice all parts of the code (not only API facing). So why testing in an app like Paw? And should we encourage "bad practices" with a new feature that encourages users to have request/response assertions in our app instead proper unit tests? First, everyone isn't writing tests ;) And sometimes maybe for good reasons (quickly putting together an MVP…). Assertions can be a quick alternative before writing proper unit tests. But mostly, we were thinking about assertions in Paw as a great way to do quick integration testing. For example, we've released Paw 3 recently, pushed server updates on an hourly basis, and we had no way to verify after a deploy that all the website's pages were up and that API endpoints were behaving as expected. Sure, the CI was saying that tests are passing, but who knows if someone has changed settings on AWS or on 3rd party tools (Stripe, Algolia…)? We would have loved to have assertions ourselves…
harrychenca 10y ago
If you already write specs for your API, you would seldom use a GUI to test API.
sinzone 10y ago
Paw is engineered by a top notch team in France. They care about quality and details. We at Mashape have partnered with them in the past and they are super responsive and always focused on the best experience for the developer.
developer2 10y ago
As someone who just spent 30 minutes setting Paw up for my needs, here is my review. Unfortunately, it is not worth $50. It's not the price point itself, it's the fact that the app is too unpolished to pay any amount. After the first 30 minutes, I won't be continuing - and would not even if it were free. The application hijacks mouse events for custom widgets that don't function as expected. It takes far too much pointer precision to manage the request list and the groups. Half the time the drag-and-drop glitches so that you are highlighting rows without actually having the item with the cursor. You also cannot drop a group to the end of the list. Similar problem in the environments config window: add a second environment for a variable; the column widths are too short to see the variable's value, so you try to resize the columns and it doesn't work even though the resize icon appears on hover. The "JSON" response format is hideous and for some reason the default. The "JSON Text" format is what I want and switch to, but this fact is not remembered and every single new response resets back to the ugly xml-tree-like format. By the way, trying to click the help icon for dynamic values opens the documentation to a page[1] that doesn't load due to an encoded '#' symbol (%23). Again, a sign of a final product with very little QA, being sold at a fairly premium price for which one expects quality. The UI and interactions are far from seamless. The constant harassment of a popup trying to get me to upgrade is the last straw. When a user is on trial, you don't interrupt their workflow every few minutes. [1] https://paw.cloud/docs/dynamic-values/response%23Response_Body_Key_Path https://paw.cloud/docs/dynamic-values/response%23Response_Bo...
- fredsted 10y ago
  For what it's worth, I've been using this app for over a year and I haven't been noticing the issues you're talking about. My request list probably contains hundreds of requests from different projects grouped into folders. I've tried using postman but it just isn't the same. Paw is much more efficient with screen space, and I love being able to copy any request from Chrome directly into paw and being able to tinker with it right away.
- dbbk 10y ago
  I agree with you on the default JSON response format. I was also manually switching it over to JSON Text every time. However, yesterday I found the preference setting - It's in Preferences > Response > .json, you can change the format to JSON Text there.
bmarkovic 10y ago
I understand that ISVs pick Mac because that's where most of the paying customers are but the OSX monoculture oozing from Bay Area today is even more tiresome than the Wintel monoculture of yesteryear. Ask authors of Macaw what good it did them or did Web flow actually eat their lunch. As far as I am concerned if a dev tool isn't three platforms crossplatform it didn't need to exist at all. Don't be surprised if it's another "yeah I remember them" niche thing in a couple of years. Existence of Postman and Insomnia is already a burden for this product, being OSX only will likely limit it's eeach to Starbucks dwelling hipsters from SoCa.
eliangcs 10y ago
I'm the creator of HTTP Prompt (https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt). HTTP Prompt is HTTPie enhanced with autocomplete and syntax highlighting. This is the first time I hear about Paw, and I wonder how it compares to HTTP Prompt. Would any Paw users like to share?
- colinbartlett 10y ago
  Wow HTTP Prompt looks amazing, thanks for posting this. I was reading through this thread thinking Paw looks neat but I am more comfortable in a terminal.
RantyDave 10y ago
I have this and it's awesome.
artiscode 10y ago
Software engineers are an interesting bunch... Reading all the bashing comments about Paw not being free, I can't help but feel a vibe, that some people expect to be paid thousands of dollars and not pay a single cent themselves. Where does this entitlement come from? Good job guys! You made a fantastic product. I will always favor native apps over Electron hacks. I can't count how many times I've CMD+Tabbed to Chrome and hit CMD+W to close a tab, only to see Postman disappear. It disrupts my flow. One thing though. I'm a developer, I know what I'm doing. Please make JSON Text the default option. Formatted JSON doesn't hurt or threaten me :) I expect to see my responses exactly as they are. Edit: Unfortunately I have to edit this comment to give additional feedback about Paw. I'm using the 30 day trial, i.e. I am evaluating the product. Paw is running in the background, I'm not interacting with it in any way, but it jumps to foreground, just to show me a pop-up window informing me, that I have 29 days left of trial and should upgrade. No, thank you, I installed the app just an hour ago. I'm aware of the 30 day trial. No need to nag about it every 20 minutes, that will not prompt me to upgrade any sooner. If anything, it does quite the opposite.
- selud 10y ago
  Yes, exactly this. I so have to second the edit. It's exactly the same for me. I'm way more tempted to delete the app instead of buying it. Only using it for an hour and so far it has annoyed me way more than it helped me.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  When I do development in my spare time, I tend to gravitate towards paid software, since it tends to be higher quality and have better support. However, my employer is extremely frugal and has very tight budgetary controls, so getting even the smallest expenses approved can be a huge hassle. So, perhaps ironically, I gravitate towards free products when doing professional development. This is probably completely backwards, but it is what it is! Anyway, I disagree with all the Paw bashing of course, but I think it is important for everyone to be aware of free alternatives - not necessarily because people feel "entitled" to free stuff, but that their circumstances may cause them to prefer not having to pay.
orliesaurus 10y ago
I haven't used Paw in a while but from what I remember Paw has an excellent UI and UX - it goes above and beyond API developer's expectation and it also used to integrate with mashape (not sure if this is still a feature?). Either way spectacular product! I also got familiar with Stoplight.io - which I have found to be a little bit harder to use but has a large array of features that I think could inspire a lot of developers to build and grow the API dev community aaand I don't work for either companies!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

351 points by andyfleming 10y ago

It's not cheap but it is one of my most used dev tools that is not an editor/IDE. Highly recommended.

How is this different from Postman? It seems very similar, but Postman is free and has other really awesome features (like being able to export tests and run them in the command line).

matthewmacleod 10y ago
The main thing for me was that it's a proper native app. It works really well, takes advantage of the native OS APIs and is a better product because of it.
- doomtop 10y ago
  Hypernap is a proper native app and less than a tenth the cost of Paw... http://gethypernap.com/ http://gethypernap.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hypernap/id795069997 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hypernap/id795069997
  - andyfleming 10y ago
    But it isn't as nice and it doesn't have any solution for cloud/team syncing, right?
    - doomtop 10y ago
      Commenter mentioned OSX native app being the main thing for them. It is an OSX native app. But no, it's not a good team solution. And I'd agree that Paw is subjectively more "nice", but I'm not sure I'd agree it's 12x more nice... If it were $9.99 instead of $49.99, I would have already purchased it. As it stands, I'm sticking with Hypernap, which gets the job done for my needs.
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        It doesn't have to be 12x better. It only has to save you $45 worth of time more than a $5 alternative, or $50 more than a free alternative. Most engineers are paid on the order of $30-$150/hour, depending on whether full-time, contractor, level of experience, etc. So, it has to save about 1.5 hours over the alternatives to be worth the price. I don't know if it does that, as I've never used it, and don't use macOS. There are other things it could save instead of or in addition to time: Hassle, maybe it doesn't have any external dependencies or complicated setup; stress, maybe it works reliably while others are buggy and unreliable; etc. Again, I don't know. And, I tend to choose OSS solutions, even when it costs me more time/hassle/stress. But, there's a number of reasons one might choose a more expensive tool that does roughly the same job as lower cost alternatives, and it might be the right economic decision to do so.
  - developer2 10y ago
    Hypernap may be a native app, but it's certainly not beautiful or fully featured. It uses the most basic interface elements thrown together in a messy soup. I have immense respect for people who manage to develop native apps, but when the interface looks like it was implemented as someone's very first experiment in XCode... well, there's a reason you don't pay much. I don't understand why developers throw their arms in the air over pricing. Try out the app; if it has everything you will ever need out of such a tool and it greatly improves your productivity every single day... a one-time $50 payment is nothing. It's the cost of going out for dinner one evening.
- ubertaco 10y ago
  Which to me in this case just means "I can only run this on my work Macbook, and not on my personal Linux or Windows machines, or on a Chromebook."
  - andyfleming 10y ago
    That is a major advantage of postman, but the reality for me is that I use an API client like this when I'm building and API. I'm on my mac and Paw is the best, most productive option. I've been giving feedback to the postman team and hope to see it continue to improve. The electron desktop app was a big step forward, but there is still lots of room to improve.
andyfleming 10y ago
The UX is 1000x better. Faster load up, more intuitive keyboard/mouse navigation, etc etc.
andyfleming 10y ago
Postman isn't free if you are using team syncing. They are both $X/user/month.

tommynicholas 10y ago

Paw is amazing

ecaroth 10y ago

I purchased Paw about 6 months ago and used it heavily, until recently I have ran into multiple situations where it didn't properly include custom headers I specified into the request, and was causing odd errors that I assumed were the fault of the code I was testing (happened in multiple different languages/projects). I have since started using Postman, but would love to go back to Paw since I appreciated some if it's features (such as being able to save an API definition into the github repo for sharing with other devs) EDIT - didn't realize this post was for Paw 3, which just became available. Installing now and excited to try it!

dchuk 10y ago

Interesting, this is the first time I've seen a domain with the .cloud extension. I wonder how many other companies are going to follow suit? Regarding the app, Paw is friggin amazing. I was lucky to get it back when it was much cheaper, but it's definitely still worth the $49 even now. The team stuff is interesting too, as me and my guys share our exports all the time.

andyfleming 10y ago

I'm having a conversation with the CEO of Postman on twitter now about ways Postman could improve: https://twitter.com/andyfleming/status/759134340185862144 https://twitter.com/andyfleming/status/759134340185862144 For now though, I'm super excited about the new Paw app.

andyfleming 10y ago

The big difference with Paw 3 that is allowing my team to make the switch is team syncing.

karlshea 10y ago

I've been using Paw 2 for a project in the last couple of months and it's totally amazing. Very excited to give the new version a try!

eddieroger 10y ago

I've used Paw for a few years since I started getting inconsistent Postman results thanks to Chrome cookies, and I haven't looked back. It's really a fantastic tool that is part of my daily life as an API guy. The dev, Micha, is super helpful via email and has even incorporated feedback when the app didn't work the way I expected (like sending request body on GET). I would honestly buy it again if updates weren't free.

mittsh 10y ago
Thanks, Eddie! That's really a kind feedback! But we're a whole team now ;)
- eddieroger 10y ago
  Well cheers to the whole team then! Keep it up.

hugocbp 10y ago

Great news! I use Paw all the time while exploring new APIs. It is a great piece of software. EDIT: Wow! Just saw that the upgrade to v3 is free for v2 users! Nice surprise!

pimlottc 10y ago

Looks cool! Probably should specify Web API tool, though; there are plenty of APIs that have nothing to do with HTTP.

mittsh 10y ago
I'm with you on this, the wide use of the word "API" to designate Web/HTTP APIs is wrong. But we have to admit that if you talk with someone saying "we're build an API that does X", everyone will understand it's a web service, not a C++ library ;) So in the end words are just ways to communicate ideas…so we went for the simpler "API" wording. -Micha (from Paw)

jen20 10y ago

Paw is a really great product, I've been using it for a long time now. I _really_ wish they would combine this with traffic capture - similar to Fiddler on Windows. Charles does the trick, but it's a mess to set up for proxying HTTPS traffic.

hishnash 10y ago
Traffic capture is definitely something we are looking into. Through to be honest it would most likely be a companion app rather than directly embedded within Paw --matthaus (@hishnash) Backend syncing dev at paw.cloud

cwisecarver 10y ago

Paw is excellent. I've used it for years. The one feature I hope for in v3 is the ability to import cookies from Safari/Chrome/etc.

avitzurel 10y ago

I've been using Postman for a couple of year now if I recall correctly. It's an absolute timesaver for me when developing and using an API. Paw looks really good. I'll definitely give that a try, especially if the team sharing features are good.

manyxcxi 10y ago
I've used Postman on and off but I just find the UI more burdensome than it's worth and use one of the more simple rest clients and curl for when I'm really trying to string together some complicated requests. Paw looks gorgeous and very nicely featured. Let's see how it works on Monday against the Niantic APIs :)
- developer2 10y ago
  Postman is decent. But it takes too many click to do things like managing environment variables. Then there's the double-scrolling issue when reading responses which is atrocious; the response text is placed in a scrollable field - and that field has the parent window which also scrollable. Having to operate nested scrollbars to read every single response - which is the most frequent task you are performing - ruins the entire application. I hadn't heard of Paw, but based on the screenshots and positive reviews in the comments, I'll be giving the trial a go. Fingers crossed!
bdcravens 10y ago
Used it about a year. Happy with it. Has a few nice shortcuts (though can't speak to how those compare to Postman)

aphextron 10y ago

This looks amazing and desperately needed. Postman is ok, but to finally have a proper native app with a modern UI is fantastic.

Walkman 10y ago

It even supports SSL client certificates!

jameslk 10y ago

For those who want something that works really well, with a very nice UI and is free, I would highly recommend Insomnia for Google Chrome (it functions as a standalone app outside of Chrome). https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/insomnia-rest-client/gmodihnfibbjdecbanmpmbmeffnmloel?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/insomnia-rest-clie...

bitmapbrother 10y ago
Didn't know about this. Thanks!
andyfleming 10y ago
Hadn't heard of this, but I am familiar with mashape. Their stuff is solid. Though, it looks like it is in beta, and I don't see any way to do cloud/team syncing.
- jameslk 10y ago
  The latest version (3.0) appears to be in beta, but 2.x is stable and I've been using it for at least a year. It doesn't have cloud/team syncing (at least in 2.x), but it does allow you to export request groups as JSON which can be shared/versioned. For being free and cross-platform, that seems good enough for me.
  - andyfleming 10y ago
    Postman went through a similar progression. For me I need team/cloud syncing that goes beyond shipping around a JSON file. Although it looks like the new PAW team syncing might be leveraging git behind the scenes.
  - gschier 10y ago
    Hi there. I'm the creator of insomnia and just want to say thanks for the recommendation. So far, 3.0 ditches the Chrome dependency and provides a much nicer UI, but more advanced features like sync and versioning are in the works! ~ Gregory
10y ago

throwaway745234 10y ago

Bought Paw on the Mac App Store a while back. I wonder if this update will come to me as well, or that I need to repurchase. For now I can't find Paw 3 there at all; perhaps they stopped using the MAS?

SkyMarshal 10y ago
Sketch (https://www.sketchapp.com/ https://www.sketchapp.com/) stopped using MAS in the past year too. Not the best trend for Apple.
- tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
  But a well-documented one. GJ, Apple. You're alienating everybody and going back to the cesspool you wallowed in throughout the '90s. Jony Ive's pathetic, regressive designs should launch Apple's coffin ship nicely in the consumer realm, as well.
lnikkila 10y ago
Update is free. Instructions on how to migrate your App Store purchase are here: https://paw.cloud/docs/getting-started/migrate-from-appstore https://paw.cloud/docs/getting-started/migrate-from-appstore

jadengore 10y ago

I've owned Paw for a while, and I find it much more user-friendly than Postman. It's not for everyone, sure, but the developer has put in good work and you won't regret a purchase.

ceejayoz 10y ago
I bought Paw because the latest version of Postman went to absolute shit. Never looked back.
- pbreit 10y ago
  Yeah, seems like the UX has been degrading. Still really like the functionality, though.
- boie0025 10y ago
  Yeah I went hunting for a new API software for the same reason.. I wound up purchasing Paw for my team. The big selling point for me was the ability to define a request, and then use data from that request in other requests (the dynamic data). And... the UI is wildly better IMO. Thanks to Paw for making a great piece of software that's not a pain to use!

a-b 10y ago

I'm curious if there is anything in Paw that curl or siege can't do.

mmanfrin 10y ago
This is a UI for APIs, curl and siege are CLIs. You know the difference, quit trolling.
- smaudet 10y ago
  So, I'm not trolling - I don't like UIs if they don't provide more functionality than data entry, I think they are counter productive. So, seriously, what advantages does it provide, beyond being 'accessible' to people with cli allergies. I'm curious.

davidhariri 10y ago

I've been using Paw for two months now. Much better than Postman IMO. Best to the developers

tuxracer 10y ago

Would love to see built-in HAR import/export

josefdlange 10y ago
AFAIK its import/export features are plugin based. Write it!
- mittsh 10y ago
  That's very true :) You can write custom extensions for Paw, and they can be then shared with the community. But anyway, there's already a HAR importer, you can install it here as an extension https://paw.cloud/extensions/HARImporter https://paw.cloud/extensions/HARImporter Also, we're working on a powerful API format transformer that we will release more officially soon, but it's already on GitHub: https://github.com/luckymarmot/api-flow https://github.com/luckymarmot/api-flow That will allow us to release exporters for Swagger, RAML, HAR soon as well as formats of other clients like Postman and DHC Client. If you're curious about writing an exporter/generator though here are some steps: https://paw.cloud/docs/extensions/create-code-generator https://paw.cloud/docs/extensions/create-code-generator (Disclaimer, Paw guy here…)
  - merb 10y ago
    Extension APIs mostly are a minus. It's mostly used as an excuse for not shipping features.
    - hishnash 10y ago
      We are making over half of the available extensions, it's a good way to ship small features to users that need them without a full blown update. Also it keeps the app simple for users that only need to key feature set. Check out our GitHub: https://github.com/luckymarmot https://github.com/luckymarmot We have someone full time on the extention now, in addtion to other team mebembers spending time as well (disclaimer member of Paw team here..)
    - 10y ago

hkjgkjy 10y ago

Looks cool :-). If there is any Emacs hackers looking for a way to make and document api calls, I recommend Restclient-mode[0]. Emacs Rocks! Episode on Restclient-mode[1]. [0] https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el [1] http://emacsrocks.com/e15.html http://emacsrocks.com/e15.html

KuiN 10y ago

As a (somewhat stubborn) adherent to httpie | jq, what do I gain from my $50 going to Paw?

theonemind 10y ago
I'm a pretty heavy RESTful API user (feels like what I spend most of my day doing a lot of times), a pretty heavy Paw user and pretty well versed with its feature set, and on the CLI side, curl | jq. So I think I can actually probably answer this pretty well. Paw helps me compose arbitrary calls faster. It also helps me just keep track of and search API calls really easily, just by searching the request list. I have an API call right there, with the JSON body, and I don't have to pull up the API docs. It's just way better than having a bunch of little shell scripts for these API calls, and better than having a big, ugly, stupid text file full of API calls, because I can execute them, and it really helps in composing them. It just helps with a lot of little random stuff. Like, if you tell it you're doing a JSON-body form post, and you've got quote marks in there, it'll get those quotes escaped right to get it embedded in the JSON. If you're a heavy RESTful API user, I'd say just give it a try for a month and see if you feel like it's worth it. I thought it was. There's command history, and if you're executing calls multiple times in a row and might want to see what changed between them later, the history is great. You can scroll back in your terminal, sure, but you tend to close terminal windows and lose the output. It just keeps everything glued together, it's really much more coherent than trying to throw around a lot of disparate API calls in a terminal with curl (or httpie.) That being said, I do find it to be complementary to curl | jq. For one, the "keypath" filter in the http exchange pane of Paw doesn't take anything close to a full jq-like syntax. I pretty frequently use the "curl" code generator (it's got an httpie code generator as well, but it doesn't seem that one is as good at shell-quoting edge cases. Not sure who maintains that extension and if it's open-source, but if you love it, you might be able to help fix it if it interferes with your workflow) to copy out the call I composed, and even executed in Paw, so that I can do some jq mangling. (Or i could just copy out the json body if I didn't want to re-execute the call.) If slinging RESTful API calls is a significant part of your day, you're almost certainly going to find value in something like Paw. It's got a 1 month free trial. I tried it, and didn't really plan to buy it, but a month ended, and I was using it and liked it.

josefdlange 10y ago

I love using Paw. I'm no longer in the building phase of my service, but when I was defining my API and testing endpoints, Paw was critical in the process. My main feature request (and I'm not sure if any competitor does this, so please inform me if it exists somewhere): While Paw allows me to export code, which is cool and all, it would be very interesting to allow me to compose workflows, like, say Automator in macOS, including assertions, so that I could essentially compose and export integration tests with Paw. It'd be neat to see some more generally API-definition features hit Paw, or maybe a companion app that plays nicely with Paw to do the definition half of things, compatible with Swagger and whatnot. Clearly not a well-thought-out idea, but I think there's space in Paw's domain for some form of what I'm talking about.

andyfleming 10y ago
This is similar to Postman's test runner feature. You can export a collection of requests and even write simple assertions in javascript. Although it looks like Paw has potential for something similar with its extensions. It already has some sort of javascript availability. https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/make-your-app-extensible-with-javascript-core-7074061f2b05#.vmjlukl51 https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/make-your-app-extens...
mittsh 10y ago
We have actually two ideas in this area. First, as you mentioned, assertion testing. We've recently published a workaround (as a joke, but it's actually working :D) https://blog.paw.cloud/posts/secret-path-to-paw-assertions/ https://blog.paw.cloud/posts/secret-path-to-paw-assertions/ but a real alternative is coming next. Second, we are currently brainstorming around the idea of a good automation app. So somehow the two ideas may merge. We're not sure yet what would make sense for automation, but for assertions testing, for sure it's in the pipeline! -Micha from Paw
- josefdlange 10y ago
  Love your interest in the community. Thanks for hearing me out!
10y ago

enahs-sf 10y ago

Looks much better than the curls I am currently pasting to my teammates.

bjoernw 10y ago

Jmeter is free and has more features https://jmeter.apache.org/ https://jmeter.apache.org/ Though I agree it might be overkill for simple use cases.

discordance 10y ago

Just a heads up to the product owner - the site needs some work for mobile users: https://imgur.com/a/akNqP https://imgur.com/a/akNqP

mittsh 10y ago
Yeah, we're aware of this :( we need to spend time polishing those styles! -Micha from Paw

flyosity 10y ago

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is an extremely high quality, native Mac app, made by a small team trying to provide for their families by building software for other software engineers like all of us. It's a paid tool but it's probably the most sophisticated API testing tool that exists. I've been a completely satisfied Paw user for over a year. It's been invaluable to me and I use it constantly. It is worth the money. It is more sophisticated with a far better user interface than anything else out there. Use the trial, buy it if you like it, but this pattern of comments saying Check Out Product Z, It's Like Product Y But Free (And Less Good) makes me hate coming to HN.

wmccullough 10y ago
I've observed a very similar thing for awhile now. I'm to the point where I rarely delve into the comments anymore. I've noticed what you've seen about product announcements, or people just generally being contrarian for no reason that adds value to a discussion. I'm eagerly waiting for the day that I see this happen, and I mean literally: "Scientists find a new reason to explain why the sky appears blue." HN: I know nothing about science but the sky is definitely azure, not blue.
elmigranto 10y ago
I don't really see how any of the facts you mention makes linking similar tools here a bad thing? Unless someone's bashing on Paw for being a paid software in a disrespectful manner, I think it is fine to link to others, why not?
cwp 10y ago
Yeah. I bought Paw and love it. It's easily paid for its self in time saved.
swilliams 10y ago
I was a happy Postman user for a long time. I tried Paw on a lark (the importance of free trials) and loved it. Totally worth the money to me, and I've only scratched the surface with it. I especially like the plugins ecosystem.

batbomb 10y ago

I was worried for a second somebody brought the Physics Analysis Workstation back to life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_Analysis_Workstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_Analysis_Workstation

mightykan 10y ago

Why do I need to create an account with an email and password to purchase this if it’s not a subscription service? To add insult to injury, I have to agree to some Terms of Service that probably indemnifies this company from doing whatever they want with my data. Who comes up with these brilliant ideas? The Mac App Store is absolutely horrible (lots of bugs, slow, inconsistent, almost unusable, absurd certificate expiration issues that are completely embarrassing for a company like Apple, etc.) and Apple has completely ignored all developers who use it... but this is exactly why I always prefer buying from it. I don’t want some nobody developer harvesting my information, and selling/renting it off to some who knows who either now or some years down the line when the company folds. Please have respect for your potential paying customers and drop these kinds of practices. Other than recovering a potentially lost license key, there is absolutely nothing I need from you, including any and all “news or updates”, after I have purchased the app. Therefore you should only really need some unique value (like the hash of an email address) for that.

brennebeck 10y ago
Honest question: what apps that you purchase don't ask for your name or email?
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Asking for an email is one thing. The problem is needing to create an account for downloading. I certainly didn't need an account when I bought a license for Eagle.
- mightykan 10y ago
  Asking for email, and sometimes name, is fine. Forcing me to register is absurd. There are lots of “indy” software developers that don’t play these games.
  - brennebeck 10y ago
    Fair point. I wasn't aware you had to register a full account to start a trial. That definitely seems a bit much and I don't see the usefulness as getting the user's email would be just as effective for conversion.

jamestnz 10y ago

Paw is a great tool, but I can also attest to the excellent support of the developer. I made a mistake when uninstalling it off my old Mac, and found myself unable to activate the serial on my new Mac. Micha replied personally, took me at my word regard the issue I was having, and immediately added a second seat to my serial for free, as the simplest way to guarantee I'd never have the problem again. I appreciated that. Secondly, there are indeed many similar tools, but I've found that Paw in particular has well-thought-out implementations of a number of useful features (cookies, JSON parsing, auth methods, history) as well as a neat way of managing requests across environments e.g. dev machine vs test server vs production API. Paw isn't the only tool I use when testing/developing API endpoints, but I find it to be the most featureful while also playing nice as a Mac app, with a decent UI and the expected things like remembering my previous window positions/states the next time I launch it.

brennebeck 10y ago
Exactly. My interactions with support have all been fantastic and the app is, for me, by far the most featureful and robust tool in this space. And they're continually adding additional features.

kodisha 10y ago

Best feature of paw (idk if it was intentional) - fetch huge json - collapse first level fields - leave node/subnode of interest open - change backend - refresh paw, and see changes way faster, coz it will show only open subtree really useful for large json responses! (Postman dies on those)

xenadu02 10y ago

I had the pleasure of emailing with Paw's creator when he was thinking of applying to YC and introducing him to the founders of PlanGrid. I can vouch for Paw; it's an awesome tool.

morgante 10y ago

I've used Postman for a while, but I keep running into a strange issue where it somehow shares cookies with Chrome. It's proven very annoying for testing certain APIs (because the cookies override whichever auth headers I'm sending), so I've been looking for an alternative. Paw definitely looks promising. The pricing seems a little steep though.

idontgiveafuck 10y ago

Okie okie, people bought this, so what? "I am professional" "I am support the dev team" "I am a great developer with great salary" "It's better than anything" ---------------------------------------- CMON, ITS JUST A TOOL AND CMON, DO YOU REALLY NEED it WITH YOU EXTREMMEMEMEME AMAZING PROJECT?

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

EDIT: I found more info. They're using RNCryptor. Hopefully not the C++ bindings! https://github.com/RNCryptor/RNCryptor-cpp/issues/2 https://github.com/RNCryptor/RNCryptor-cpp/issues/2

hishnash 10y ago
We are using the RNCryptor Obj-C api. ( matthaus of Paw here )

greggman 10y ago

This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be negative but I'm really confused. It would seem like best practices is that all of this is part of your automated tests. Tests that are checked in to your repo and written in code and part of your CI. How does a native app that is OSX only fit in that scenario? Or maybe I'm not understanding it?

brianpan 10y ago
I'm guessing this is more for in development or debugging issues.
ing33k 10y ago
imo Paw is not an automated API testing tool. You can use it to explore/browse API's. Developers after creating a new endpoint or after editing an existing endpoint want ways to easily send a properly constructed request and visually check the returned response (mostly json these days ). There's a feature in Paw which let's you generate code in multiple languages for any request that's already in Paw. May be people are using it as a starting point to write tests.
mittsh 10y ago
As ing33k mentioned, Paw isn't an automated testing tool (at least not yet), but rather an app where you can experiment with your or others APIs to check if things are working, and have a visual feedback/confirmation of what you're doing. But that's actually a great question. We are asking ourselves the same here at Paw: should our app offer a testing/assertions feature? Our own server backend is in Django using the Django REST Framework (it's an amazing tool btw) and clearly unit testing done inside the web framework is the right thing to do. Good frameworks have mocking libraries, and unit tests allows you to exercice all parts of the code (not only API facing). So why testing in an app like Paw? And should we encourage "bad practices" with a new feature that encourages users to have request/response assertions in our app instead proper unit tests? First, everyone isn't writing tests ;) And sometimes maybe for good reasons (quickly putting together an MVP…). Assertions can be a quick alternative before writing proper unit tests. But mostly, we were thinking about assertions in Paw as a great way to do quick integration testing. For example, we've released Paw 3 recently, pushed server updates on an hourly basis, and we had no way to verify after a deploy that all the website's pages were up and that API endpoints were behaving as expected. Sure, the CI was saying that tests are passing, but who knows if someone has changed settings on AWS or on 3rd party tools (Stripe, Algolia…)? We would have loved to have assertions ourselves…

harrychenca 10y ago

If you already write specs for your API, you would seldom use a GUI to test API.

sinzone 10y ago

Paw is engineered by a top notch team in France. They care about quality and details. We at Mashape have partnered with them in the past and they are super responsive and always focused on the best experience for the developer.

developer2 10y ago

As someone who just spent 30 minutes setting Paw up for my needs, here is my review. Unfortunately, it is not worth $50. It's not the price point itself, it's the fact that the app is too unpolished to pay any amount. After the first 30 minutes, I won't be continuing - and would not even if it were free. The application hijacks mouse events for custom widgets that don't function as expected. It takes far too much pointer precision to manage the request list and the groups. Half the time the drag-and-drop glitches so that you are highlighting rows without actually having the item with the cursor. You also cannot drop a group to the end of the list. Similar problem in the environments config window: add a second environment for a variable; the column widths are too short to see the variable's value, so you try to resize the columns and it doesn't work even though the resize icon appears on hover. The "JSON" response format is hideous and for some reason the default. The "JSON Text" format is what I want and switch to, but this fact is not remembered and every single new response resets back to the ugly xml-tree-like format. By the way, trying to click the help icon for dynamic values opens the documentation to a page[1] that doesn't load due to an encoded '#' symbol (%23). Again, a sign of a final product with very little QA, being sold at a fairly premium price for which one expects quality. The UI and interactions are far from seamless. The constant harassment of a popup trying to get me to upgrade is the last straw. When a user is on trial, you don't interrupt their workflow every few minutes. [1] https://paw.cloud/docs/dynamic-values/response%23Response_Body_Key_Path https://paw.cloud/docs/dynamic-values/response%23Response_Bo...

fredsted 10y ago
For what it's worth, I've been using this app for over a year and I haven't been noticing the issues you're talking about. My request list probably contains hundreds of requests from different projects grouped into folders. I've tried using postman but it just isn't the same. Paw is much more efficient with screen space, and I love being able to copy any request from Chrome directly into paw and being able to tinker with it right away.
dbbk 10y ago
I agree with you on the default JSON response format. I was also manually switching it over to JSON Text every time. However, yesterday I found the preference setting - It's in Preferences > Response > .json, you can change the format to JSON Text there.

bmarkovic 10y ago

I understand that ISVs pick Mac because that's where most of the paying customers are but the OSX monoculture oozing from Bay Area today is even more tiresome than the Wintel monoculture of yesteryear. Ask authors of Macaw what good it did them or did Web flow actually eat their lunch. As far as I am concerned if a dev tool isn't three platforms crossplatform it didn't need to exist at all. Don't be surprised if it's another "yeah I remember them" niche thing in a couple of years. Existence of Postman and Insomnia is already a burden for this product, being OSX only will likely limit it's eeach to Starbucks dwelling hipsters from SoCa.

eliangcs 10y ago

I'm the creator of HTTP Prompt (https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt). HTTP Prompt is HTTPie enhanced with autocomplete and syntax highlighting. This is the first time I hear about Paw, and I wonder how it compares to HTTP Prompt. Would any Paw users like to share?

colinbartlett 10y ago
Wow HTTP Prompt looks amazing, thanks for posting this. I was reading through this thread thinking Paw looks neat but I am more comfortable in a terminal.

RantyDave 10y ago

I have this and it's awesome.

artiscode 10y ago

Software engineers are an interesting bunch... Reading all the bashing comments about Paw not being free, I can't help but feel a vibe, that some people expect to be paid thousands of dollars and not pay a single cent themselves. Where does this entitlement come from? Good job guys! You made a fantastic product. I will always favor native apps over Electron hacks. I can't count how many times I've CMD+Tabbed to Chrome and hit CMD+W to close a tab, only to see Postman disappear. It disrupts my flow. One thing though. I'm a developer, I know what I'm doing. Please make JSON Text the default option. Formatted JSON doesn't hurt or threaten me :) I expect to see my responses exactly as they are. Edit: Unfortunately I have to edit this comment to give additional feedback about Paw. I'm using the 30 day trial, i.e. I am evaluating the product. Paw is running in the background, I'm not interacting with it in any way, but it jumps to foreground, just to show me a pop-up window informing me, that I have 29 days left of trial and should upgrade. No, thank you, I installed the app just an hour ago. I'm aware of the 30 day trial. No need to nag about it every 20 minutes, that will not prompt me to upgrade any sooner. If anything, it does quite the opposite.

selud 10y ago
Yes, exactly this. I so have to second the edit. It's exactly the same for me. I'm way more tempted to delete the app instead of buying it. Only using it for an hour and so far it has annoyed me way more than it helped me.
enraged_camel 10y ago
When I do development in my spare time, I tend to gravitate towards paid software, since it tends to be higher quality and have better support. However, my employer is extremely frugal and has very tight budgetary controls, so getting even the smallest expenses approved can be a huge hassle. So, perhaps ironically, I gravitate towards free products when doing professional development. This is probably completely backwards, but it is what it is! Anyway, I disagree with all the Paw bashing of course, but I think it is important for everyone to be aware of free alternatives - not necessarily because people feel "entitled" to free stuff, but that their circumstances may cause them to prefer not having to pay.

orliesaurus 10y ago

I haven't used Paw in a while but from what I remember Paw has an excellent UI and UX - it goes above and beyond API developer's expectation and it also used to integrate with mashape (not sure if this is still a feature?). Either way spectacular product! I also got familiar with Stoplight.io - which I have found to be a little bit harder to use but has a large array of features that I think could inspire a lot of developers to build and grow the API dev community aaand I don't work for either companies!

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