10 ms·

Insomnia 3.0 – A simple and beautiful REST API client

523 points by nwrk 10y ago

bognition 10y ago
Interesting, I've been using paw for years and love it but i'm always on the lockout for new and better tools
- gschier 10y ago
  As the creator of Insomnia, I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestion that you have. Insomnia is still in early stages, so anything helps :)
- chadscira 10y ago
  Paw is really the way to go if you can swing the $50 entry fee. Extremely polished native app, with so many features.
- the_arun 10y ago
  I wish paw team had "paw light" - free edition with limited set of features for folks who cannot afford $50
  - oliyoung 10y ago
    Paying $9/month for a team subscription was easier for me to take
  - hishnash 10y ago
    We have considered a Paw Light, if it were to come it would be a little diffrent from Paw. More focusing of throw away requests than building large projects. If we put work into it we would like it to still bring value to our Paying customers. But currently we have a lot on our plate to bring Paw to a feature complete state. (matthaus, backend dev on https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud)
tzm 10y ago
I'd like to see an API client that generates a API docs from a project / workspace.
- electic 10y ago
  Same here, it seems this is still a huge hassle.
- gschier 10y ago
  Plugging a competitor here, but I believe Postman has the ability to generate documentation.
  - tiku 10y ago
    And it can also generate program code for a lot of languages, curl or wget requests etc, and is has the interceptor plugin.. cant really be beaten at this time...
    - gschier 10y ago
      Postman has a tonne of features, but this also makes the UI more difficult to learn an use. This is one of the reasons I created Insomnia. P.S. Insomnia also has code generation https://insomnia.rest/documentation/code-snippets/ https://insomnia.rest/documentation/code-snippets/
- briandrupieski 10y ago
  Have you tried Swagger?
- johns 10y ago
  Try stoplight.io
- markbnj 10y ago
  Swagger UI seems to do a pretty decent job. The thing I like about swagger is you create one canonical description of your API and model and then generate postman collections, API docs, and client/server stubs all from the same source.
lux 10y ago
I've been using Postman/Newman for testing and really liking it overall. One thing I'd love to see in one of these apps is the ability to use web sockets in tests.
- gschier 10y ago
  Great suggestion. Websocket support is definitely something I've been thinking about adding later on. I'd love to hear any suggestions you have on what a websocket testing workflow would look like.
  - mikerybka 10y ago
    I would be happy with very basic support. Just something that can save messages and connection urls. A nice JSON viewer/editor like you have already would be very helpful to me as well. The current options for websocket testing aren't that great.
    - gschier 10y ago
      Awesome, I'll keep that in mind.
    - shi 10y ago
      +1 for WebSocket support
mrmondo 10y ago
Hi, is this a native (objective c / swift) OS X or just a web frame? What are you main goals as far as being different from Paw, which is what I use and love thus far? *edit: oh and congratulations on getting your app out there :)
- gschier 10y ago
  Thanks for the question! Insomnia is an Electron app built with with a mix of React and Elm. As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me. And, as a web developer, it's been a super productive development environment. The goal for Insomnia is to build a REST client that's easy to learn and a joy to use. I looked into other REST clients before starting Insomnia and found them to be cluttered and complicated. Paw was my favourite, but I needed something cross-platform so was unable to use it.
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
    As someone with macOS and now a linux machine, Insomnia will be a perfect replacement for Paw.
    - gschier 10y ago
      :)
  - danellis 10y ago
    > As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me. I'm not saying you made the wrong choice, but why do you say that, given the various options for cross-platform development (Qt, Mono, etc)?
    - dotancohen 10y ago
      Python with PySide (Qt) is always my cross-platform choice. Though I suppose if the OP is a web developer then Electron (JavaScript) would be easier to learn.
bvanvugt 10y ago
Yes! I've been using Insomnia since it was a Chrome extension and the new 3.0 release is an amazing upgrade. I strongly agree with the developer that tools like Postman are quite bloated and complex for normal development tasks. Insomnia is very lightweight and refreshing!
r0y3 10y ago
How is it compared to Postman?
- gschier 10y ago
  I covered this a little bit in the comments below, but one of the reasons I created Insomnia was because I found other tools (including Postman) to be hard to learn and use. So, for me, the main advantage is having a clean and simple (but still powerful) interface. Insomnia also has a Linux desktop app, which makes it one of the only REST clients to support all three major platforms. Insomnia is still in early stages, so if you have any feedback or suggestions I'd love to hear!
niftich 10y ago
I find the visual design appealing, and at a cursory glance, the list of features decent. A few questions: - Is there a way to override the cookies of a single request? Or do you have to edit the cookie jar and the corresponding cookies get auto-sent (ie. no override) - For authorization, do you have built-in support for OAuth 2.0 access/refresh token flows? What about OAuth 1 ? - Do you support HTTP/2?
- gschier 10y ago
  Thanks for the compliment! Having good UI/UX was my first goal for Insomnia so I'm glad to see it's working. - there is no way to override cookies per request yet, but that's good feedback :) - I'm working on OAuth support soon so keep an eye out for that - HTTP/2 support isn't in the works yet, but is on the roadmap Thanks for the comment!
  - johanbas 10y ago
    OAuth is on my requirements list as well. Especially OAuth2 - client_credentials
foob 10y ago
A lot of people here have been mentioning Postman but my personal go-to has been Advanced Rest Client [1]. It's open source, has Google Drive integration, and seems to have a pretty impressive development rate. For me, it's a definite plus that there isn't a paid tier so the developers don't have any incentive to limit the free product. That said, Insomnia looks like a nice contender and I look forward to giving it a shot. The reuse of variables across requests and the automatic generation of boilerplate request code both look like really nice features that ARC lacks! [1] https://advancedrestclient.com/ https://advancedrestclient.com/
- hobarrera 10y ago
  For me, it's a shame it's a chrome app, rather than a plain ol'd desktop app. Having to fire up chromium to run something this simple seems like an overkill.
- gschier 10y ago
  Ya, ARC is a pretty good one! Have you heard how the developer is handling the announcement of the shutdown of Chrome apps in 2017? Curious if they'll hop on the Electron bandwagon too.
  - jarrodek 10y ago
    As an author of the ARC. I'm considering using electron and move to native apps and discontinuing Chrome integration. But right now I'm not focusing on it. At the end of last year when I started moving the old app to new packaged apps platform I already knew that some changes are necessary and I started to modularize the app into web components (using Polymer framework) to be able to relatively fast move to another platforms with minimal change in the code. So UI components are using web only features, app logic only javascript and non-chrome related APIs and finally Chrome related components that can be easily replaced by other platform's implementation. So eventually (this is ongoing task) I'll be able to move pretty much any web environment.
  - nnain 10y ago
    Yup, ARC is good and open source! This blogpost explains its update to Chrome 'packaged app' - https://restforchrome.blogspot.in/2016/04/new-advanced-rest-client-chrome-app.html https://restforchrome.blogspot.in/2016/04/new-advanced-rest-...
brandonb927 10y ago
I've been using Insomnia since the beginning and I really appreciate how receptive gschier is to feedback and how the support side of things are handled. I'd love to hear what you're planning on working on next and how you plan to monetize (if you're going to) :)
- gschier 10y ago
  Insomnia is still in the early stages, so talking to users is something I spend a lot of time and effort on. It's the only way to make a good product :) My current plan for monetization is to add multi-device sync (almost ready for beta) then team collaboration features shortly after. There are also some advanced features left to implement like OAuth support, scripting (settings environment variables from response data), and a few others. Thanks for the comment!
nul_byte 10y ago
Executionable which won't run on my machine (Fedora) and not open source, guess I will be staying with Advance Rest Client then.
- gschier 10y ago
  Hi there. Could you reach out to support@insomnia.rest with details? I'd love to help get this running for you. The linux build uses http://appimage.org/ http://appimage.org/ which should support Fedora out of the box.
- gschier 10y ago
  Hi there. Can you try downloading the latest version again. Apparently the last release was corrupted for an unknown reason. I uploaded a new one though :)
hoodoof 10y ago
Interesting - the pricing page is not done. I think developers have a tendency to prioritize things like pricing below the technical features.
- gschier 10y ago
  Insomnia is still in early stages so the paid plans aren't entirely worked out yet. The goal with the pricing page was to put something up early to gauge interest. I wrote a bit more about pricing in a past comment if you're curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433260
mcotton 10y ago
Congratulations on making something great.
- gschier 10y ago
  Thanks you! Let me know if there is anything I can do to make it even better :)
  - mcotton 10y ago
    Insomnia seems to be stuck in an "Install update" loop. Each time it opens I get prompted to update and restart. I update and restart and then get updated again. The cycle continues. I'm uninstalling and re-downloading it but just wanted to let you know.
cyberferret 10y ago
Seems cool - I am going to download now and try it out. Tip: I suggest removing the 'pricing' menu option on the top of the web site. I saw it immediately the first time I went to your site, and I assumed yours was a paid product, so I stopped there and closed the window. It was only when I went back later and scrolled through, I noticed the current version is free for now. Removing the 'Pricing' link may make other people stick around longer to take a look...
- gschier 10y ago
  That's great feedback. The app is (and always will be) free so de-prioritizing the pricing page is probably a good idea :)
  - cavemanklaus 10y ago
    I'll add that when I see no Pricing page it causes me suspicion, what's the catch? how am I being dataminded? I'd at the least explain somewhere on the page how pricing works or how this is free and funded.
    - imron 10y ago
      Yep. Developers need to earn money. If I don't see a pricing page I start to wonder about how they are making their money, and more importantly if they have a sustainable business model. I don't want to rely on a tool that then goes out of business.
      - eloisant 10y ago
        Yes, developers need to earn money. I know, I'm one (like probably most users of this software). Sometimes developers release open source software, earn money with a different job and the project doesn't go out of business (because it's not a business). This is something I was used to explain in the 90's, I didn't expect to have to explain it again in 2016. No back to "businesses". When I see a free version and a paid version, and I know the difference, I can decide whether I want to use the free version, pay for the paid version or use neither. However when I see "everything free for now but paid version later, the difference between the 2 unclear", it worries me that there will be some bait-and-switch, and the free version will be gimped or will get ads.
maxpert 10y ago
I use Google chrome + Postman (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbifli... extension URL), this seems good but makes me wonder how much of a work it is for Postman to now run there app on electron.
- zackboe 10y ago
  Postman has native apps out for Win/Mac & Linux "soon" https://www.getpostman.com/apps https://www.getpostman.com/apps
- sapphire_tomb 10y ago
  Unfortunately, Postman's native apps don't handle NTLM authentication, which basically makes them unusable for me. Have to stick with the chrome extension for the time being.
pavanlimo 10y ago
I do not see any feature in Insomnia that's not already in Postman. Am I missing something? Edit: I do not mean to undermine the effort, just wondering if Postman users have any incentive to switch.
- gschier 10y ago
  Great question. Insomnia is still pretty early, so the feature set is limited, but all the basics are there. Most users coming from Postman comment on the great UI/UX of Insomnia.
  - pavanlimo 10y ago
    Agree, UI/UX does look more pronounced and simpler.
- hajile 10y ago
  I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
oliyoung 10y ago
Nice, one thing that gets me paying for https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud is the ability to chain requests ie. GET /things -> GET /things/{things.first.id} -> PUT /things/{things.first.id} -> DELETE /things/{things.first.id}
- gschier 10y ago
  Coming soon... ;)
  - justabystander 10y ago
    I was looking into doing this today. Specifically, I needed to reference a particular property (a token in the JSON/XML content) in future requests. The docs discuss using the nunjucks templating engine, and nunjucks supports setting variables in the template. But there's no clear indication how I could set the environment variables using the response data (either manually, automatically, or using some hybrid by pre-defining buttons to set values). I'll be interested to hear when you have some sort of chaining or environment variable setting in place.
- nicobn 10y ago
  A comment like this is precisely why I come to HN. This product looks amazing.
  - oliyoung 10y ago
    It is WELL worth the $50, or $9/month on a team subscription plan
- petarb 10y ago
  I had no idea you could chain requests in Paw! Thanks for sharing that useful tidbit.
- onion2k 10y ago
  Postman can do that too, albeit in a hacky way. https://www.getpostman.com/docs/chaining_requests https://www.getpostman.com/docs/chaining_requests
danso 10y ago
This is lovely. I wish I knew about it earlier so I could ask IT to install it on our lab machines for students to use when i teach web concepts. The Postman plugin is nice but I had trouble working with it on my own, and sometimes it's nice to have a separate app.
- sunilkumarc 10y ago
  What kind of problems did you face with Postman?
vxNsr 10y ago
I'm not sure how important this is to you, but on the iPhone 6s the word "blog" is cutoff at the top of the website when in portrait mode
- gschier 10y ago
  Thanks, fixed :)
arafalov 10y ago
I keep hoping one of these clients will add IPython/Jupyter style notebook specifically for REST calls. I would love to produce a tutorial that has well formatted URLs with params, bodies, headers and pre-saved results that could also be rerun against local server.
- dagss 10y ago
  I think you should be able to get pretty far by just writing Python code that uses the API; using requests that should be as readable as anything else? Which brings me to: I just use Python snippets if I want to test a REST API quickly. What am I missing out of by not using these tools?
  - arafalov 10y ago
    Yes and no. If I am writing a tutorial using REST calls, wrapping them in Python syntax is less than effective as a presentation. It also requires Jupiter backend running, which could be a burden to host for a popular multi-user tutorial. It is something that O'Reilly is experimenting right now with their interactive tutorials, but even for them, it is early days.
- a85 10y ago
  You can build this workflow using Postman Collections - chain calls + tests + other logic.
jaza 10y ago
Any plans to open source this? Considering that (a) it's cross-platform since day one, (b) it's an HTTP client for developers, and (c) it's apparently built with the JS ecosystem, seems like the kind of app that should be open source, and honestly I'm surprised to see no Github link.
- gschier 10y ago
  I've been considering it. I want to wait until development settles down a bit, but open sourcing it definitely in the back of my mind.
userbinator 10y ago
The Windows installer is 60MB and it's 64-bit-only? It has a nice fancy GUI and all, but am I the only one thinking that's just a tiny bit... excessive? Especially when it claims to be "A simple and beautiful REST API client". The Mac OS and Linux versions are a bit smaller, but still not quite what I consider "simple". Also, did anyone else instinctively try decoding that Authorization header in one of the screenshots? :-)
- gschier 10y ago
  It's based on the Electron framework (http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/) so the installer contains an entire copy of the Chromium browser. I agree that it's large, but it's basically the only option for an indie developer to write a cross-platform app. Also, 32 bit support is possible, but is a bit of work and demand hasn't been high enough to spend time on it. P.S. All the data in the screenshots is fake :P
  - userbinator 10y ago
    When I think "cross-platform app", I think of Java. Maybe I'm getting old... P.S. All the data in the screenshots is fake :P I've seen a few instances where the data would decode to something like "if you can read this, we're hiring".
    - gschier 10y ago
      haha :D
    - jimmcslim 10y ago
      SoapUI is a cross-platform Java REST/SOAP, etc testing tool. Was originally open-source, there is now a paid version but an OSS version is still available. https://www.soapui.org https://www.soapui.org
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    > I agree that it's large, but it's basically the only option for an indie developer to write a cross-platform app. What ever happened to Qt, WxWidgets and the like?
stephenr 10y ago
Your app is a web view running inside a copy of Chrome. That is not a "native" app.
- zenbot 10y ago
  Is this a general objection to apps being web views run inside of Chrome? Insomnia's website does not make any claims towards being native.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    > Insomnia's website does not make any claims towards being native. From https://insomnia.rest/pricing/ https://insomnia.rest/pricing/ "Native app for Mac, Windows, Linux"
    - gschier 10y ago
      I agree with the word "native" not suiting Electron apps well. I Updated the pricing page wording to reflect this. I think I originally used "native" because the Electron landing page does http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/
      - stephenr 10y ago
        Thank you. As I've said previously I don't have any issue with the term 'desktop app' for things like this, so I think this was the right choice. Good luck with it!
ycombinatorMan 10y ago
Thats an instant download
rado 10y ago
Looks great and works as expected. Cheers
- gschier 10y ago
  Glad you like it! :D
telesilla 10y ago
I've been using http://mmattozzi.github.io/cocoa-rest-client http://mmattozzi.github.io/cocoa-rest-client for a couple of years, I just tried Insomnia and I think I'll be switching: having the ability to call frequently used API requests without having to re-enter JSON data will be very useful. Nice app, thanks gschier.
psynapse 10y ago
Tried out the Chrome plugin when RESTClient stopped working in Firefox. It stuck, and now I believe all of my small team uses it. I've been on the stand-alone version since release. I use it for testing, but also more as a diagnostics/control panel for a software suite that we expose via a growing HTTPS API - saving the requests and payloads makes this easy. One thing I miss from RESTClient is the formatting. We have a small JSON DSL that we exchange data with, so those strings have to be escaped going up, and of course they come back with all the escapes. In RESTClient, you could view the response "formatted", which would un-escape those strings. This made for easy copy and manipulation.
aniceguy 10y ago
I found this https://github.com/S2-/http-client https://github.com/S2-/http-client open source client quite good. It uses chrome in the background to make the requests (you can see it by hitting f12), so proxy settings and all the other stuff works fine.
nhatbui 10y ago
Hi, I definitely like the UI/UX of this over ARC. I haven't used Paw or Postman. It sounds like you're taking suggestions so my only one would be configurations that make working with OAuth simpler like OAuth signature generation. Great work!
- gschier 10y ago
  I'll make a note of that, thanks!
pcx 10y ago
We've been using Postman https://www.getpostman.com/ https://www.getpostman.com/, and it's been working great for our team. The sync and export features are killer. But I like the dark theme and the vertical split in Insomnia, will give it a try.
- gschier 10y ago
  Sync is coming for Insomnia in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that. Also, be sure to reach out and let me know what you think could be improved :)
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  The main problems I have with Postman is the fact it doesn't have a file backing it (like Paw does), so if you want to use it for e.g. documentation or a client for your API, you have to manually import / export it. I'm sure that's to promote getting the team license, but still. And its UX is not great, particularly when it comes to switching between tabs, closing them, saving requests, etc.
yegor256a 10y ago
Good job, very nice UI!
gopishankar28 10y ago
I just installed and ran a request, seems the response xml format was not available as nicely formatted. I just saw a junk of xml as result. Is there any configuration available for the auto formatting with indents for the sub-elements. I believe postman does it by itself.
- gschier 10y ago
  Adding formatting for response types other than JSON is on the list of things to do :)
  - gopishankar28 10y ago
    Thanks for the response, I cannot pitch-in with my team unless they see this formatting, that too testing team will abject to the core :(
    - gschier 10y ago
      :(
rockyex 10y ago
Already downloaded. Wondering this has file upload feature
- gschier 10y ago
  Not at this time, but it's something I want to add.
srd 10y ago
I'm a bit confused. Installing this on archlinux from the AUR I get version 3.3.1; however the post itself seems to be for 3.0beta (judging from the announcement halfway down the page). Which is the actual current version?
- gschier 10y ago
  Version 3.3.1 is the latest release. The "3.0" in the post is just used to differentiate it from the existing Chrome-based application (1.0 - 2.0)
shakesbeard 10y ago
Looks really good! Are there any plans for custom authentication or pre-request hooks? Asking because for my API I need to be able to sign requests.
- gschier 10y ago
  Thanks! No plans for custom auth in the short term, but I've been thinking about implementing a scripting layer which should make things like custom auth possible (although maybe not that enjoyable).
vfaronov 10y ago
Since everybody's piling on their favorite alternatives, I have to mention HTTP Prompt [1]. It's obviously in another league than Insomnia and such, but I find that it strikes a sweet spot: much more convenient than curl or HTTPie, yet not a big mouse-driven GUI tool. [1] https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt
- joelthelion 10y ago
  Pretty cool, but I wonder why it doesn't preserve history by default between sessions.
  - tomduncalf 10y ago
    Is there a way to make it do so?
rasapetter 10y ago
This seems great. I used Postman for a while but I never got along with the UI, found it poorly structured and cluttered. While this is obviously still very young, it shows a lot of promise. Using environment variables in headers or request params was a bit disappointing though. The UI keeps replacing the reference with a copy of the current value when input field is moved out of view. Is this the intended behavior?
- gschier 10y ago
  Hmm, that is a bug. Let me fix it :)
AMedOs 10y ago
Are there any plans to support importing postman collections or something like Swagger?
j1436go 10y ago
A small nitpick: The generated Go code omits error handling and doesn't escape quotation marks when adding a header value containing a space.
_pdp_ 10y ago
I've used Insomnia in the past when I was evaluating various REST clients. At the time I was using mainly Burp and sometimes Postman. I did not stick to it mainly because I could not find some features that I needed for my work. From what I can see on the website, the new update is around the client apps built specifically for Mac, Windows and Linux, which in my mind is a welcome addition. That being said, I will definitely have a look to see what is new. Since everyone is putting their favorite REST client - here is my own (disclosure I am the author). I've built it to fit my own needs and combine essential features from other clients which I find useful. I looked mainly at Burp, Postman and of course Paw for inspiration. The tool is available at the Chrome App Store here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest2/oiikfajocfmeodfknhfdccmpacdkkcbb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest2/oiikfajocfme... You can also access it directly from here: https://rest.secapps.com https://rest.secapps.com It is a work in progress but it has some features I am yet to see in other web-based REST clients, such as: * Dynamic fields and variables that are re-computed on the fly. * Built-in text transforms that allow me to recompute a value in its original form. * Support for constructing multi-part requests with data and files easily. * The ability to modify file names and file types in multi-part requests. * Handle all headers (even those which are marked private in the Chrome and Firefox APIs). * Works in both Chrome and Firefox - on problem. * Locally cached for offline use. * All requests originate from your own machine - the tool runs locally. * Pretty-print everything including JavaScript, CSS, XML, HTML and many more. * Pretty-print any type of form and request payload. * Automatic code generator. The reason it is a work in progress is because the current online version is at leas 3 versions behind from the libraries we use internally. We have scheduled some work to bring it up to date and we will be adding local storage and remote storage support very soon. The tool is 100% free and it is part of our new tool stack at secapps.com. I need to say that we are revamping our current business model so that we can provide all of the tools free of charge to the larger community. These changes are not reflected on the site yet but I will as soon as the new stack is completed. And if you are interested in these kind of stuff, here are a few more tools also free of charge: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/httpview2/nnkpnmkdilaaoakiihhbbgnkgjokjfgk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/httpview2/nnkpnmkd... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/encoder2/hlmjgnklmnjhaefamejmkdbimambmmlb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/encoder2/hlmjgnklm... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfold2/lmgdfkfedkpmiegpchfnkagjnipmehoh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfold2/lmgdfkfedk... Apologies for intruding into this post but I thought there is a good opportunity to suggest some alternatives as I've seen other people do. Insomnia is still great though and I am sure some people will prefer its looks over other clients.
xaduha 10y ago
It's still manual testing, I pretty much stopped using those and just write test files for REST testing.
JoelSanchez 10y ago
I've just replaced Postman with this. The UI seems much cleaner. The fact that I can run this as a command, instead of relying on an opened instance of Chrome, makes it very convenient for me. Also, it has a much better startup time. I don't miss any Postman feature, I only make quite basic POST and GET requests, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Great project!
shenal 10y ago
Is it possible to import my Postman collections ?
- esseti 10y ago
  i do need this, i've a collection of 100+ calls and i would like to import it without the need of rewriting everything
PascalW 10y ago
Nice to see some competition for Postman. Even though Postman works quite well I never really liked it. Lot's of common actions are pretty tedious, like changing an environment variable and lot's of small annoyances like it automatically following redirects etc. A while ago I took a stab at building my own Postman alternative, Pragma [1]. What I found was that getting the basic functionality going is obviously not that hard, but building a good and useful UI requires quite a bit of effort. https://github.com/pascalw/pragma https://github.com/pascalw/pragma
- mittsh 10y ago
  I cannot agree more on this :) The first time I saw Insomnia last year, I found it already very well designed. It had a smooth UX on most basic actions and, I have to say, a fun use of the ".rest" domain name! I'm the founder of Paw https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud and I can safely say that building a good UI is a lot of work. While Paw is built on native Cocoa/AppKit (OS X app framework), the challenges with web are different, but the amount of work is always here. Each custom control, tweak on the text fields and other sorts of custom behaviors are taking a lot of time to imagine, design and implement. But it's a lot of fun too! Clearly Insomnia is one of these apps where by just landing on the website you know that it's made my someone who has a good taste and who pays attention to details. As of the app, most common Mac shortcuts are working. And the fact that you cannot open the Chrome console (Cmd+Shift+I) or select text outside of user inputs are a proof of a well polished product. It's often hard to make a point about polished UIs because it's highly subjective and it's common to see people wanting to compare only "raw features" between two products. I'm not a big fan of Electron apps, and Paw and Insomnia are somehow competing (one native, full-featured with extensions and dynamic values, team syncing…the other being a more lightweight version), but I must admit that Insomnia is nicely made! :)
- spoiler 10y ago
  > What I found was that getting the basic functionality going is obviously not that hard, but building a good and useful UI requires quite a bit of effort. The hardest part for me is always a "good" UI, I can make it useful, but getting it to look good, smooth and feel pleasant is the biggest challenge.
amelius 10y ago
Perhaps a stupid question, but why not just use something like NodeJS to test your REST APIs? To me this seems more flexible, and more powerful, and simpler to manage (because the scripts are just files on your local computer). And by writing a handful of library routines you can make it even more smooth.
andrewingram 10y ago
I'm hoping that one of these products (I use Paw at the moment) will eventually add support for GraphQL servers, so that I can switch from using GraphiQL to something a little more pretty and powerful.
laacz 10y ago
What a name. Almost misread it for jsonmia. :)
sebthomas 10y ago
that url is going to be disappointing for people looking for help with insomnia
tomelders 10y ago
If anyone is reading this, being able to write consumer tests would be wicked! The overwhelming majority of bugs I have to squash are because the API deviates form the contract either in my mock implementation or in the back enders implementation. A frictionless way to write tests on the fly would really speed up spotting these deviations.
jsargiox 10y ago
It's nowhere near the features and look of Insomnia but a pet project that I work on my spare time it's http://github.com/jsargiot/restman http://github.com/jsargiot/restman. The initial need was because Opera didn't had an extension of such kind.
manishyt 10y ago
Sorry I am just going to shamelessly promote a similar CLI tool I wrote: https://github.com/manishtomar/crest https://github.com/manishtomar/crest. Help in https://github.com/manishtomar/crest/blob/master/usage.md https://github.com/manishtomar/crest/blob/master/usage.md. Please do try it out :)
dessant 10y ago
I really love the UI! I'd find it useful to have a pause/disable button before params and headers, not near the delete button though, it would be too easy to accidentally click in the wrong place.
bsandert 10y ago
I would love to see a general purpose API client that works similar to the Elasticsearch client Sense [0]. A simple, free-text scratchpad style client that allows for easy editing and firing of requests. Maybe it's hard to support all the advanced functionality this way, but I find Sense absolutely invaluable when working with Elasticsearch and would love to use it on other API. [0]: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/sense/current/introduction.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/sense/current/introduction.h...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

523 points by nwrk 10y ago

bognition 10y ago

Interesting, I've been using paw for years and love it but i'm always on the lockout for new and better tools

gschier 10y ago
As the creator of Insomnia, I'd love to hear any feedback or suggestion that you have. Insomnia is still in early stages, so anything helps :)
chadscira 10y ago
Paw is really the way to go if you can swing the $50 entry fee. Extremely polished native app, with so many features.
the_arun 10y ago
I wish paw team had "paw light" - free edition with limited set of features for folks who cannot afford $50
- oliyoung 10y ago
  Paying $9/month for a team subscription was easier for me to take
- hishnash 10y ago
  We have considered a Paw Light, if it were to come it would be a little diffrent from Paw. More focusing of throw away requests than building large projects. If we put work into it we would like it to still bring value to our Paying customers. But currently we have a lot on our plate to bring Paw to a feature complete state. (matthaus, backend dev on https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud)

tzm 10y ago

I'd like to see an API client that generates a API docs from a project / workspace.

electic 10y ago
Same here, it seems this is still a huge hassle.
gschier 10y ago
Plugging a competitor here, but I believe Postman has the ability to generate documentation.
- tiku 10y ago
  And it can also generate program code for a lot of languages, curl or wget requests etc, and is has the interceptor plugin.. cant really be beaten at this time...
  - gschier 10y ago
    Postman has a tonne of features, but this also makes the UI more difficult to learn an use. This is one of the reasons I created Insomnia. P.S. Insomnia also has code generation https://insomnia.rest/documentation/code-snippets/ https://insomnia.rest/documentation/code-snippets/
briandrupieski 10y ago
Have you tried Swagger?
johns 10y ago
Try stoplight.io
markbnj 10y ago
Swagger UI seems to do a pretty decent job. The thing I like about swagger is you create one canonical description of your API and model and then generate postman collections, API docs, and client/server stubs all from the same source.

lux 10y ago

I've been using Postman/Newman for testing and really liking it overall. One thing I'd love to see in one of these apps is the ability to use web sockets in tests.

gschier 10y ago
Great suggestion. Websocket support is definitely something I've been thinking about adding later on. I'd love to hear any suggestions you have on what a websocket testing workflow would look like.
- mikerybka 10y ago
  I would be happy with very basic support. Just something that can save messages and connection urls. A nice JSON viewer/editor like you have already would be very helpful to me as well. The current options for websocket testing aren't that great.
  - gschier 10y ago
    Awesome, I'll keep that in mind.
  - shi 10y ago
    +1 for WebSocket support

mrmondo 10y ago

Hi, is this a native (objective c / swift) OS X or just a web frame? What are you main goals as far as being different from Paw, which is what I use and love thus far? *edit: oh and congratulations on getting your app out there :)

gschier 10y ago
Thanks for the question! Insomnia is an Electron app built with with a mix of React and Elm. As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me. And, as a web developer, it's been a super productive development environment. The goal for Insomnia is to build a REST client that's easy to learn and a joy to use. I looked into other REST clients before starting Insomnia and found them to be cluttered and complicated. Paw was my favourite, but I needed something cross-platform so was unable to use it.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 10y ago
  As someone with macOS and now a linux machine, Insomnia will be a perfect replacement for Paw.
  - gschier 10y ago
    :)
- danellis 10y ago
  > As an independent developer wanting to reach all platforms, Electron was basically the only option for me. I'm not saying you made the wrong choice, but why do you say that, given the various options for cross-platform development (Qt, Mono, etc)?
  - dotancohen 10y ago
    Python with PySide (Qt) is always my cross-platform choice. Though I suppose if the OP is a web developer then Electron (JavaScript) would be easier to learn.

bvanvugt 10y ago

Yes! I've been using Insomnia since it was a Chrome extension and the new 3.0 release is an amazing upgrade. I strongly agree with the developer that tools like Postman are quite bloated and complex for normal development tasks. Insomnia is very lightweight and refreshing!

r0y3 10y ago

How is it compared to Postman?

gschier 10y ago
I covered this a little bit in the comments below, but one of the reasons I created Insomnia was because I found other tools (including Postman) to be hard to learn and use. So, for me, the main advantage is having a clean and simple (but still powerful) interface. Insomnia also has a Linux desktop app, which makes it one of the only REST clients to support all three major platforms. Insomnia is still in early stages, so if you have any feedback or suggestions I'd love to hear!

niftich 10y ago

I find the visual design appealing, and at a cursory glance, the list of features decent. A few questions: - Is there a way to override the cookies of a single request? Or do you have to edit the cookie jar and the corresponding cookies get auto-sent (ie. no override) - For authorization, do you have built-in support for OAuth 2.0 access/refresh token flows? What about OAuth 1 ? - Do you support HTTP/2?

gschier 10y ago
Thanks for the compliment! Having good UI/UX was my first goal for Insomnia so I'm glad to see it's working. - there is no way to override cookies per request yet, but that's good feedback :) - I'm working on OAuth support soon so keep an eye out for that - HTTP/2 support isn't in the works yet, but is on the roadmap Thanks for the comment!
- johanbas 10y ago
  OAuth is on my requirements list as well. Especially OAuth2 - client_credentials

foob 10y ago

A lot of people here have been mentioning Postman but my personal go-to has been Advanced Rest Client [1]. It's open source, has Google Drive integration, and seems to have a pretty impressive development rate. For me, it's a definite plus that there isn't a paid tier so the developers don't have any incentive to limit the free product. That said, Insomnia looks like a nice contender and I look forward to giving it a shot. The reuse of variables across requests and the automatic generation of boilerplate request code both look like really nice features that ARC lacks! [1] https://advancedrestclient.com/ https://advancedrestclient.com/

hobarrera 10y ago
For me, it's a shame it's a chrome app, rather than a plain ol'd desktop app. Having to fire up chromium to run something this simple seems like an overkill.
gschier 10y ago
Ya, ARC is a pretty good one! Have you heard how the developer is handling the announcement of the shutdown of Chrome apps in 2017? Curious if they'll hop on the Electron bandwagon too.
- jarrodek 10y ago
  As an author of the ARC. I'm considering using electron and move to native apps and discontinuing Chrome integration. But right now I'm not focusing on it. At the end of last year when I started moving the old app to new packaged apps platform I already knew that some changes are necessary and I started to modularize the app into web components (using Polymer framework) to be able to relatively fast move to another platforms with minimal change in the code. So UI components are using web only features, app logic only javascript and non-chrome related APIs and finally Chrome related components that can be easily replaced by other platform's implementation. So eventually (this is ongoing task) I'll be able to move pretty much any web environment.
- nnain 10y ago
  Yup, ARC is good and open source! This blogpost explains its update to Chrome 'packaged app' - https://restforchrome.blogspot.in/2016/04/new-advanced-rest-client-chrome-app.html https://restforchrome.blogspot.in/2016/04/new-advanced-rest-...

brandonb927 10y ago

I've been using Insomnia since the beginning and I really appreciate how receptive gschier is to feedback and how the support side of things are handled. I'd love to hear what you're planning on working on next and how you plan to monetize (if you're going to) :)

gschier 10y ago
Insomnia is still in the early stages, so talking to users is something I spend a lot of time and effort on. It's the only way to make a good product :) My current plan for monetization is to add multi-device sync (almost ready for beta) then team collaboration features shortly after. There are also some advanced features left to implement like OAuth support, scripting (settings environment variables from response data), and a few others. Thanks for the comment!

nul_byte 10y ago

Executionable which won't run on my machine (Fedora) and not open source, guess I will be staying with Advance Rest Client then.

gschier 10y ago
Hi there. Could you reach out to support@insomnia.rest with details? I'd love to help get this running for you. The linux build uses http://appimage.org/ http://appimage.org/ which should support Fedora out of the box.
gschier 10y ago
Hi there. Can you try downloading the latest version again. Apparently the last release was corrupted for an unknown reason. I uploaded a new one though :)

hoodoof 10y ago

Interesting - the pricing page is not done. I think developers have a tendency to prioritize things like pricing below the technical features.

gschier 10y ago
Insomnia is still in early stages so the paid plans aren't entirely worked out yet. The goal with the pricing page was to put something up early to gauge interest. I wrote a bit more about pricing in a past comment if you're curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433260

mcotton 10y ago

Congratulations on making something great.

gschier 10y ago
Thanks you! Let me know if there is anything I can do to make it even better :)
- mcotton 10y ago
  Insomnia seems to be stuck in an "Install update" loop. Each time it opens I get prompted to update and restart. I update and restart and then get updated again. The cycle continues. I'm uninstalling and re-downloading it but just wanted to let you know.

cyberferret 10y ago

Seems cool - I am going to download now and try it out. Tip: I suggest removing the 'pricing' menu option on the top of the web site. I saw it immediately the first time I went to your site, and I assumed yours was a paid product, so I stopped there and closed the window. It was only when I went back later and scrolled through, I noticed the current version is free for now. Removing the 'Pricing' link may make other people stick around longer to take a look...

gschier 10y ago
That's great feedback. The app is (and always will be) free so de-prioritizing the pricing page is probably a good idea :)
- cavemanklaus 10y ago
  I'll add that when I see no Pricing page it causes me suspicion, what's the catch? how am I being dataminded? I'd at the least explain somewhere on the page how pricing works or how this is free and funded.
  - imron 10y ago
    Yep. Developers need to earn money. If I don't see a pricing page I start to wonder about how they are making their money, and more importantly if they have a sustainable business model. I don't want to rely on a tool that then goes out of business.
    - eloisant 10y ago
      Yes, developers need to earn money. I know, I'm one (like probably most users of this software). Sometimes developers release open source software, earn money with a different job and the project doesn't go out of business (because it's not a business). This is something I was used to explain in the 90's, I didn't expect to have to explain it again in 2016. No back to "businesses". When I see a free version and a paid version, and I know the difference, I can decide whether I want to use the free version, pay for the paid version or use neither. However when I see "everything free for now but paid version later, the difference between the 2 unclear", it worries me that there will be some bait-and-switch, and the free version will be gimped or will get ads.

maxpert 10y ago

I use Google chrome + Postman (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbifli... extension URL), this seems good but makes me wonder how much of a work it is for Postman to now run there app on electron.

zackboe 10y ago
Postman has native apps out for Win/Mac & Linux "soon" https://www.getpostman.com/apps https://www.getpostman.com/apps
sapphire_tomb 10y ago
Unfortunately, Postman's native apps don't handle NTLM authentication, which basically makes them unusable for me. Have to stick with the chrome extension for the time being.

pavanlimo 10y ago

I do not see any feature in Insomnia that's not already in Postman. Am I missing something? Edit: I do not mean to undermine the effort, just wondering if Postman users have any incentive to switch.

gschier 10y ago
Great question. Insomnia is still pretty early, so the feature set is limited, but all the basics are there. Most users coming from Postman comment on the great UI/UX of Insomnia.
- pavanlimo 10y ago
  Agree, UI/UX does look more pronounced and simpler.
hajile 10y ago
I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

oliyoung 10y ago

Nice, one thing that gets me paying for https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud is the ability to chain requests ie. GET /things -> GET /things/{things.first.id} -> PUT /things/{things.first.id} -> DELETE /things/{things.first.id}

gschier 10y ago
Coming soon... ;)
- justabystander 10y ago
  I was looking into doing this today. Specifically, I needed to reference a particular property (a token in the JSON/XML content) in future requests. The docs discuss using the nunjucks templating engine, and nunjucks supports setting variables in the template. But there's no clear indication how I could set the environment variables using the response data (either manually, automatically, or using some hybrid by pre-defining buttons to set values). I'll be interested to hear when you have some sort of chaining or environment variable setting in place.
nicobn 10y ago
A comment like this is precisely why I come to HN. This product looks amazing.
- oliyoung 10y ago
  It is WELL worth the $50, or $9/month on a team subscription plan
petarb 10y ago
I had no idea you could chain requests in Paw! Thanks for sharing that useful tidbit.
onion2k 10y ago
Postman can do that too, albeit in a hacky way. https://www.getpostman.com/docs/chaining_requests https://www.getpostman.com/docs/chaining_requests

danso 10y ago

This is lovely. I wish I knew about it earlier so I could ask IT to install it on our lab machines for students to use when i teach web concepts. The Postman plugin is nice but I had trouble working with it on my own, and sometimes it's nice to have a separate app.

sunilkumarc 10y ago
What kind of problems did you face with Postman?

vxNsr 10y ago

I'm not sure how important this is to you, but on the iPhone 6s the word "blog" is cutoff at the top of the website when in portrait mode

gschier 10y ago
Thanks, fixed :)

arafalov 10y ago

I keep hoping one of these clients will add IPython/Jupyter style notebook specifically for REST calls. I would love to produce a tutorial that has well formatted URLs with params, bodies, headers and pre-saved results that could also be rerun against local server.

dagss 10y ago
I think you should be able to get pretty far by just writing Python code that uses the API; using requests that should be as readable as anything else? Which brings me to: I just use Python snippets if I want to test a REST API quickly. What am I missing out of by not using these tools?
- arafalov 10y ago
  Yes and no. If I am writing a tutorial using REST calls, wrapping them in Python syntax is less than effective as a presentation. It also requires Jupiter backend running, which could be a burden to host for a popular multi-user tutorial. It is something that O'Reilly is experimenting right now with their interactive tutorials, but even for them, it is early days.
a85 10y ago
You can build this workflow using Postman Collections - chain calls + tests + other logic.

jaza 10y ago

Any plans to open source this? Considering that (a) it's cross-platform since day one, (b) it's an HTTP client for developers, and (c) it's apparently built with the JS ecosystem, seems like the kind of app that should be open source, and honestly I'm surprised to see no Github link.

gschier 10y ago
I've been considering it. I want to wait until development settles down a bit, but open sourcing it definitely in the back of my mind.

userbinator 10y ago

The Windows installer is 60MB and it's 64-bit-only? It has a nice fancy GUI and all, but am I the only one thinking that's just a tiny bit... excessive? Especially when it claims to be "A simple and beautiful REST API client". The Mac OS and Linux versions are a bit smaller, but still not quite what I consider "simple". Also, did anyone else instinctively try decoding that Authorization header in one of the screenshots? :-)

gschier 10y ago
It's based on the Electron framework (http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/) so the installer contains an entire copy of the Chromium browser. I agree that it's large, but it's basically the only option for an indie developer to write a cross-platform app. Also, 32 bit support is possible, but is a bit of work and demand hasn't been high enough to spend time on it. P.S. All the data in the screenshots is fake :P
- userbinator 10y ago
  When I think "cross-platform app", I think of Java. Maybe I'm getting old... P.S. All the data in the screenshots is fake :P I've seen a few instances where the data would decode to something like "if you can read this, we're hiring".
  - gschier 10y ago
    haha :D
  - jimmcslim 10y ago
    SoapUI is a cross-platform Java REST/SOAP, etc testing tool. Was originally open-source, there is now a paid version but an OSS version is still available. https://www.soapui.org https://www.soapui.org
- Veratyr 10y ago
  > I agree that it's large, but it's basically the only option for an indie developer to write a cross-platform app. What ever happened to Qt, WxWidgets and the like?

stephenr 10y ago

Your app is a web view running inside a copy of Chrome. That is not a "native" app.

zenbot 10y ago
Is this a general objection to apps being web views run inside of Chrome? Insomnia's website does not make any claims towards being native.
- stephenr 10y ago
  > Insomnia's website does not make any claims towards being native. From https://insomnia.rest/pricing/ https://insomnia.rest/pricing/ "Native app for Mac, Windows, Linux"
  - gschier 10y ago
    I agree with the word "native" not suiting Electron apps well. I Updated the pricing page wording to reflect this. I think I originally used "native" because the Electron landing page does http://electron.atom.io/ http://electron.atom.io/
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Thank you. As I've said previously I don't have any issue with the term 'desktop app' for things like this, so I think this was the right choice. Good luck with it!

ycombinatorMan 10y ago

Thats an instant download

rado 10y ago

Looks great and works as expected. Cheers

gschier 10y ago
Glad you like it! :D

telesilla 10y ago

I've been using http://mmattozzi.github.io/cocoa-rest-client http://mmattozzi.github.io/cocoa-rest-client for a couple of years, I just tried Insomnia and I think I'll be switching: having the ability to call frequently used API requests without having to re-enter JSON data will be very useful. Nice app, thanks gschier.

psynapse 10y ago

Tried out the Chrome plugin when RESTClient stopped working in Firefox. It stuck, and now I believe all of my small team uses it. I've been on the stand-alone version since release. I use it for testing, but also more as a diagnostics/control panel for a software suite that we expose via a growing HTTPS API - saving the requests and payloads makes this easy. One thing I miss from RESTClient is the formatting. We have a small JSON DSL that we exchange data with, so those strings have to be escaped going up, and of course they come back with all the escapes. In RESTClient, you could view the response "formatted", which would un-escape those strings. This made for easy copy and manipulation.

aniceguy 10y ago

I found this https://github.com/S2-/http-client https://github.com/S2-/http-client open source client quite good. It uses chrome in the background to make the requests (you can see it by hitting f12), so proxy settings and all the other stuff works fine.

nhatbui 10y ago

Hi, I definitely like the UI/UX of this over ARC. I haven't used Paw or Postman. It sounds like you're taking suggestions so my only one would be configurations that make working with OAuth simpler like OAuth signature generation. Great work!

gschier 10y ago
I'll make a note of that, thanks!

pcx 10y ago

We've been using Postman https://www.getpostman.com/ https://www.getpostman.com/, and it's been working great for our team. The sync and export features are killer. But I like the dark theme and the vertical split in Insomnia, will give it a try.

gschier 10y ago
Sync is coming for Insomnia in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that. Also, be sure to reach out and let me know what you think could be improved :)
Cthulhu_ 10y ago
The main problems I have with Postman is the fact it doesn't have a file backing it (like Paw does), so if you want to use it for e.g. documentation or a client for your API, you have to manually import / export it. I'm sure that's to promote getting the team license, but still. And its UX is not great, particularly when it comes to switching between tabs, closing them, saving requests, etc.

yegor256a 10y ago

Good job, very nice UI!

gopishankar28 10y ago

I just installed and ran a request, seems the response xml format was not available as nicely formatted. I just saw a junk of xml as result. Is there any configuration available for the auto formatting with indents for the sub-elements. I believe postman does it by itself.

gschier 10y ago
Adding formatting for response types other than JSON is on the list of things to do :)
- gopishankar28 10y ago
  Thanks for the response, I cannot pitch-in with my team unless they see this formatting, that too testing team will abject to the core :(
  - gschier 10y ago
    :(

rockyex 10y ago

Already downloaded. Wondering this has file upload feature

gschier 10y ago
Not at this time, but it's something I want to add.

srd 10y ago

I'm a bit confused. Installing this on archlinux from the AUR I get version 3.3.1; however the post itself seems to be for 3.0beta (judging from the announcement halfway down the page). Which is the actual current version?

gschier 10y ago
Version 3.3.1 is the latest release. The "3.0" in the post is just used to differentiate it from the existing Chrome-based application (1.0 - 2.0)

shakesbeard 10y ago

Looks really good! Are there any plans for custom authentication or pre-request hooks? Asking because for my API I need to be able to sign requests.

gschier 10y ago
Thanks! No plans for custom auth in the short term, but I've been thinking about implementing a scripting layer which should make things like custom auth possible (although maybe not that enjoyable).

vfaronov 10y ago

Since everybody's piling on their favorite alternatives, I have to mention HTTP Prompt [1]. It's obviously in another league than Insomnia and such, but I find that it strikes a sweet spot: much more convenient than curl or HTTPie, yet not a big mouse-driven GUI tool. [1] https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt https://github.com/eliangcs/http-prompt

joelthelion 10y ago
Pretty cool, but I wonder why it doesn't preserve history by default between sessions.
- tomduncalf 10y ago
  Is there a way to make it do so?

rasapetter 10y ago

This seems great. I used Postman for a while but I never got along with the UI, found it poorly structured and cluttered. While this is obviously still very young, it shows a lot of promise. Using environment variables in headers or request params was a bit disappointing though. The UI keeps replacing the reference with a copy of the current value when input field is moved out of view. Is this the intended behavior?

gschier 10y ago
Hmm, that is a bug. Let me fix it :)

AMedOs 10y ago

Are there any plans to support importing postman collections or something like Swagger?

j1436go 10y ago

A small nitpick: The generated Go code omits error handling and doesn't escape quotation marks when adding a header value containing a space.

_pdp_ 10y ago

I've used Insomnia in the past when I was evaluating various REST clients. At the time I was using mainly Burp and sometimes Postman. I did not stick to it mainly because I could not find some features that I needed for my work. From what I can see on the website, the new update is around the client apps built specifically for Mac, Windows and Linux, which in my mind is a welcome addition. That being said, I will definitely have a look to see what is new. Since everyone is putting their favorite REST client - here is my own (disclosure I am the author). I've built it to fit my own needs and combine essential features from other clients which I find useful. I looked mainly at Burp, Postman and of course Paw for inspiration. The tool is available at the Chrome App Store here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest2/oiikfajocfmeodfknhfdccmpacdkkcbb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rest2/oiikfajocfme... You can also access it directly from here: https://rest.secapps.com https://rest.secapps.com It is a work in progress but it has some features I am yet to see in other web-based REST clients, such as: * Dynamic fields and variables that are re-computed on the fly. * Built-in text transforms that allow me to recompute a value in its original form. * Support for constructing multi-part requests with data and files easily. * The ability to modify file names and file types in multi-part requests. * Handle all headers (even those which are marked private in the Chrome and Firefox APIs). * Works in both Chrome and Firefox - on problem. * Locally cached for offline use. * All requests originate from your own machine - the tool runs locally. * Pretty-print everything including JavaScript, CSS, XML, HTML and many more. * Pretty-print any type of form and request payload. * Automatic code generator. The reason it is a work in progress is because the current online version is at leas 3 versions behind from the libraries we use internally. We have scheduled some work to bring it up to date and we will be adding local storage and remote storage support very soon. The tool is 100% free and it is part of our new tool stack at secapps.com. I need to say that we are revamping our current business model so that we can provide all of the tools free of charge to the larger community. These changes are not reflected on the site yet but I will as soon as the new stack is completed. And if you are interested in these kind of stuff, here are a few more tools also free of charge: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/httpview2/nnkpnmkdilaaoakiihhbbgnkgjokjfgk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/httpview2/nnkpnmkd... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/encoder2/hlmjgnklmnjhaefamejmkdbimambmmlb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/encoder2/hlmjgnklm... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfold2/lmgdfkfedkpmiegpchfnkagjnipmehoh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfold2/lmgdfkfedk... Apologies for intruding into this post but I thought there is a good opportunity to suggest some alternatives as I've seen other people do. Insomnia is still great though and I am sure some people will prefer its looks over other clients.

xaduha 10y ago

It's still manual testing, I pretty much stopped using those and just write test files for REST testing.

JoelSanchez 10y ago

I've just replaced Postman with this. The UI seems much cleaner. The fact that I can run this as a command, instead of relying on an opened instance of Chrome, makes it very convenient for me. Also, it has a much better startup time. I don't miss any Postman feature, I only make quite basic POST and GET requests, and I suspect I'm not the only one. Great project!

shenal 10y ago

Is it possible to import my Postman collections ?

esseti 10y ago
i do need this, i've a collection of 100+ calls and i would like to import it without the need of rewriting everything

PascalW 10y ago

Nice to see some competition for Postman. Even though Postman works quite well I never really liked it. Lot's of common actions are pretty tedious, like changing an environment variable and lot's of small annoyances like it automatically following redirects etc. A while ago I took a stab at building my own Postman alternative, Pragma [1]. What I found was that getting the basic functionality going is obviously not that hard, but building a good and useful UI requires quite a bit of effort. https://github.com/pascalw/pragma https://github.com/pascalw/pragma

mittsh 10y ago
I cannot agree more on this :) The first time I saw Insomnia last year, I found it already very well designed. It had a smooth UX on most basic actions and, I have to say, a fun use of the ".rest" domain name! I'm the founder of Paw https://paw.cloud https://paw.cloud and I can safely say that building a good UI is a lot of work. While Paw is built on native Cocoa/AppKit (OS X app framework), the challenges with web are different, but the amount of work is always here. Each custom control, tweak on the text fields and other sorts of custom behaviors are taking a lot of time to imagine, design and implement. But it's a lot of fun too! Clearly Insomnia is one of these apps where by just landing on the website you know that it's made my someone who has a good taste and who pays attention to details. As of the app, most common Mac shortcuts are working. And the fact that you cannot open the Chrome console (Cmd+Shift+I) or select text outside of user inputs are a proof of a well polished product. It's often hard to make a point about polished UIs because it's highly subjective and it's common to see people wanting to compare only "raw features" between two products. I'm not a big fan of Electron apps, and Paw and Insomnia are somehow competing (one native, full-featured with extensions and dynamic values, team syncing…the other being a more lightweight version), but I must admit that Insomnia is nicely made! :)
spoiler 10y ago
> What I found was that getting the basic functionality going is obviously not that hard, but building a good and useful UI requires quite a bit of effort. The hardest part for me is always a "good" UI, I can make it useful, but getting it to look good, smooth and feel pleasant is the biggest challenge.

amelius 10y ago

Perhaps a stupid question, but why not just use something like NodeJS to test your REST APIs? To me this seems more flexible, and more powerful, and simpler to manage (because the scripts are just files on your local computer). And by writing a handful of library routines you can make it even more smooth.

andrewingram 10y ago

I'm hoping that one of these products (I use Paw at the moment) will eventually add support for GraphQL servers, so that I can switch from using GraphiQL to something a little more pretty and powerful.

laacz 10y ago

What a name. Almost misread it for jsonmia. :)

sebthomas 10y ago

that url is going to be disappointing for people looking for help with insomnia

tomelders 10y ago

If anyone is reading this, being able to write consumer tests would be wicked! The overwhelming majority of bugs I have to squash are because the API deviates form the contract either in my mock implementation or in the back enders implementation. A frictionless way to write tests on the fly would really speed up spotting these deviations.

jsargiox 10y ago

It's nowhere near the features and look of Insomnia but a pet project that I work on my spare time it's http://github.com/jsargiot/restman http://github.com/jsargiot/restman. The initial need was because Opera didn't had an extension of such kind.

manishyt 10y ago

Sorry I am just going to shamelessly promote a similar CLI tool I wrote: https://github.com/manishtomar/crest https://github.com/manishtomar/crest. Help in https://github.com/manishtomar/crest/blob/master/usage.md https://github.com/manishtomar/crest/blob/master/usage.md. Please do try it out :)

dessant 10y ago

I really love the UI! I'd find it useful to have a pause/disable button before params and headers, not near the delete button though, it would be too easy to accidentally click in the wrong place.

bsandert 10y ago

I would love to see a general purpose API client that works similar to the Elasticsearch client Sense [0]. A simple, free-text scratchpad style client that allows for easy editing and firing of requests. Maybe it's hard to support all the advanced functionality this way, but I find Sense absolutely invaluable when working with Elasticsearch and would love to use it on other API. [0]: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/sense/current/introduction.html https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/sense/current/introduction.h...

deleted 10y ago

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