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For quick-and-dirty things I use cURL or httpie otherwise I use Paw (and have for about a year now). I had previously used Postman before that, but even then Pa

For quick-and-dirty things I use cURL or httpie otherwise I use Paw (and have for about a year now). I had previously used Postman before that, but even then Paw was a better app—native app so it looked better + felt faster, nicer collections, better default shortcuts, etc. Paw has a lot of power behind it, otherwise if you're just doing basic POST requests, stick to httpie. The code generators and extensions are nice. Easily switching between environments (e.g. dev, staging, prod). History of run requests. Tying values from other requests into other requests—e.g. get an auth token from a login request, and use that in a header in all other requests. I still only use a fairly basic amount of the features too. It's a very polished app, and the devs seem good too.

OJFord 9y ago
Just to play devil's advocate: I do all of that in Postman, which for the last year or so has also been a native app - at least, in the sense of being non-Chrome, it's not using macOS UI elements. I think different environments is a recent feature too. It's free, and cross-platform. And the team sharing capabilities are cheaper than Paw's. It's odd that Paw seems to bill its single platform nature as a feature. There's some great FOSS alternatives too!
- kiliankoe 9y ago
  Isn't Postman's "native" app electron-based instead of being the chrome packaged app from before? So they basically went from Chrome to Chromium and started calling it native...
  - OJFord 9y ago
    It's not as bad as that, it went from 'You need Chrome so you can install this app' to 'Download this standalone package'. Postman may or may not call it native, I did here, and then tried to clarify what I meant since I realised it's nativeness depended on context.
  - tonetheman 9y ago
    And really they did that because Google decided to take packaged apps away from mainstream operating systems. Packaged applications still work in ChromeOS but soon packaged apps are going away from Windows/OSX.
- eradicatethots 9y ago
  For Mac users t is a feature, it means 100% dev focus on their platform and tight integration/up to date ness with all Mac features. It’s also obvious a problem, if they have windows users team mates or friends. It’s got pros and cons.
  - OJFord 9y ago
    Does that matter without knowing the size of the team? If the team's 10x bigger than you'd have guessed, is it still worse if they're working on Windows & Linux platforms too? FWIW, I do use macOS, I just thought it was an odd 'feature', not least because it makes it unportable and contributes to lock-in.
    - eradicatethots 9y ago
      Hmm that’s a good point, I hadn’t thought about team size. Although even with a large team, there may be limits to what you can do if the product must be cross platform. It’s funny I use windows myself so this is not a feature for me, I’m really just trying to see it their way that’s all.
    - pfranz 9y ago
      The people that seek out Mac-only software may have dwindled, but from the mid-90's through the 2000's there was a lot of pride in how Mac software looked and felt way better than other OSes. When you have cross-platform software, even with a large dev team, there has to be huge compromises. For example, do menus go at the top (macOS) or do you have menus on each window (Windows)? Does Quit go under "File" (Windows) or under the app name's menu (macOS)? If you look at the Google apps on the iPhone, they originally looked like native iPhone apps, but since then Google apps look and work the same between OSes. This makes sense for a branding and development perspective. The few users who switch platforms for whatever reason are pleased, but for people who just use a Mac don't care about other platforms and want all their Mac software to look and work the same. Some people use Safari just because it's a native Mac app. Many people used Camino for that reason, too (Camino was a native Mac browser using Mozilla's Gecko engine developed between 2002-2012, first released a year before Safari). As an extreme example, personally, I avoid almost all Java apps. Yes, they're cross platform, but they're ugly, slow, and usually integrate poorly with the rest of my system. JetBrains apps are the only exception that come to mind.
emmelaich 9y ago
You can copy a browser request as a cURL command. Both Firefox and Chrome via developer tools. Just a cool feature I learnt recently.
- eradicatethots 9y ago
  Seems useful. Thanks for sharing.

OJFord 9y ago

Just to play devil's advocate: I do all of that in Postman, which for the last year or so has also been a native app - at least, in the sense of being non-Chrome, it's not using macOS UI elements. I think different environments is a recent feature too. It's free, and cross-platform. And the team sharing capabilities are cheaper than Paw's. It's odd that Paw seems to bill its single platform nature as a feature. There's some great FOSS alternatives too!

kiliankoe 9y ago
Isn't Postman's "native" app electron-based instead of being the chrome packaged app from before? So they basically went from Chrome to Chromium and started calling it native...
- OJFord 9y ago
  It's not as bad as that, it went from 'You need Chrome so you can install this app' to 'Download this standalone package'. Postman may or may not call it native, I did here, and then tried to clarify what I meant since I realised it's nativeness depended on context.
- tonetheman 9y ago
  And really they did that because Google decided to take packaged apps away from mainstream operating systems. Packaged applications still work in ChromeOS but soon packaged apps are going away from Windows/OSX.
eradicatethots 9y ago
For Mac users t is a feature, it means 100% dev focus on their platform and tight integration/up to date ness with all Mac features. It’s also obvious a problem, if they have windows users team mates or friends. It’s got pros and cons.
- OJFord 9y ago
  Does that matter without knowing the size of the team? If the team's 10x bigger than you'd have guessed, is it still worse if they're working on Windows & Linux platforms too? FWIW, I do use macOS, I just thought it was an odd 'feature', not least because it makes it unportable and contributes to lock-in.
  - eradicatethots 9y ago
    Hmm that’s a good point, I hadn’t thought about team size. Although even with a large team, there may be limits to what you can do if the product must be cross platform. It’s funny I use windows myself so this is not a feature for me, I’m really just trying to see it their way that’s all.
  - pfranz 9y ago
    The people that seek out Mac-only software may have dwindled, but from the mid-90's through the 2000's there was a lot of pride in how Mac software looked and felt way better than other OSes. When you have cross-platform software, even with a large dev team, there has to be huge compromises. For example, do menus go at the top (macOS) or do you have menus on each window (Windows)? Does Quit go under "File" (Windows) or under the app name's menu (macOS)? If you look at the Google apps on the iPhone, they originally looked like native iPhone apps, but since then Google apps look and work the same between OSes. This makes sense for a branding and development perspective. The few users who switch platforms for whatever reason are pleased, but for people who just use a Mac don't care about other platforms and want all their Mac software to look and work the same. Some people use Safari just because it's a native Mac app. Many people used Camino for that reason, too (Camino was a native Mac browser using Mozilla's Gecko engine developed between 2002-2012, first released a year before Safari). As an extreme example, personally, I avoid almost all Java apps. Yes, they're cross platform, but they're ugly, slow, and usually integrate poorly with the rest of my system. JetBrains apps are the only exception that come to mind.

emmelaich 9y ago

You can copy a browser request as a cURL command. Both Firefox and Chrome via developer tools. Just a cool feature I learnt recently.

eradicatethots 9y ago
Seems useful. Thanks for sharing.