9 ms·

Show HN: Insomnia Designer – Open-source collaborative editor for API design

317 points by Nijikokun 6y ago

chrisweekly 6y ago
This looks like a good product, and I'm happy to hear the "Core" will remain as a dedicated, simple tool. One minor bit of copyedit help; on the landing page, near the bottom: >"most users love it for how simple and easy it is to use. In order to maintain this core tenant..." tenant (resident) -> tenet (principle)
mikejulietbravo 6y ago
Love this and especially the Kubernetes features. One question - is everything in the original Insomnia in Insomnia Designer too, or are they completely different?
- gschier 6y ago
  Yes, everything in Insomnia (Core) is now part of Insomnia Designer. You will notice the Core interface when switching to "debug" mode for an API spec. This mode provides access to existing Insomnia features to let you manually test and debug your API during the design process.
  - mikejulietbravo 6y ago
    Is the plan to merge them ever or are they going to stay separate? Also, if I use Designer then I prob don't need to use the orgiinal Insomnia, right?
    - Nijikokun 6y ago
      Separate! I like to say that designer is more when you're building and creating, and core is when you're trying out other apis or just scratch padding some requests.
mikejulietbravo 6y ago
I just asked this on another version of this I saw, but how does this compare to the original Insomnia? Are they two completely different products?
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  Insomnia is an extremely powerful tool, but most users love it for how simple and easy it is to use. In order to maintain this core tenant, Designer needs to be simple too, which is why we're releasing Insomnia Designer as a separate application, focused entirely on API design.
  - mikejulietbravo 6y ago
    I asked the question elsewhere, but this doesn't mean that there's any loss of test functionality in Insomnia Designer compared to the original, right?
    - gschier 6y ago
      Currently, you can do everything you can do in Insomnia Core but it's exposed in a secondary workflow. Essentially, Designer helps you design APIs and Core helps you explore them. Depending on what you're doing, you may want to use Designer, Core, or both.
  - enlyth 6y ago
    I want to say that I use Insomnia daily and love it so much more than Postman, thanks for all your work.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
kh_hk 6y ago
Wow, big congrats to the folks behind Insomnia. I am amazed at the rate they keep improving it. The tool is ultra polished and the love that goes into it is so clear. If you have not tried it, I recommend it!
Kovah 6y ago
For people searching for similar tools: I can highly recommend Stoplight Studio. https://stoplight.io/studio/ https://stoplight.io/studio/ Depending on your actual API structure you may be able to generate a complete specification without ever touching any yaml. Been using it for the LinkAce API docs and it helped me a lot: https://stoplight.io/p/docs/gh/kovah/linkace-api-docs https://stoplight.io/p/docs/gh/kovah/linkace-api-docs
- graphememes 6y ago
  it always outputs broken specs for me
  - XVincentX 6y ago
    Would love to know more. Can we chat? vincenzo at stoplight dot io
julianlam 6y ago
As someone who just recently completed a Read API overhaul for NodeBB (https://docs.nodebb.org/api/ https://docs.nodebb.org/api/), the more I read into Swagger/OpenAPI, the more out of my depth I feel. I thought I did something cool by taking our existing express routes, generating a boilerplate OpenAPI spec, and then integrating it with our testing suite so the response type-matched the spec... but now I'm reading all this stuff about spec-first approaches to software design and I'm feeling like both my app and I are dinosaurs, and all this is only meant for brand-spanking new software.
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  I think you're being a bit hard on yourself - moving to spec-first is super hard. Erin McKean from Wordnik helped create OpenAPI spec and she talks a lot about how it's a journey to get there.
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  Don’t worry about it. You have something that works so you are already ahead. Following every trend just drives you crazy.
awang1596 6y ago
I see that Insomnia Designer supports Graph QL. Are there any templates or tutorials for building something simple using GraphQL?
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  We have some documentation on GraphQL, would be good to maybe start some tutorials and build guides! Great idea!
  - mikejulietbravo 6y ago
    +1 for this, maybe the people at Apollo could help?
nbrempel 6y ago
This is great. I'm a huge fan of Insomnia for testing APIs and I've been looking for a good tool to help with the design aspect.
littlecranky67 6y ago
I love Insomnia and use it almost daily and in the hope the developers/owners are reading here on Hacker News: Please don't make the same mistake as Postman. I used Postman years ago until it shifted from being a simple tool to test and develop REST Apis to something now called "Cloud Collaboration Platform", got way to much bloat and tries to nudge me (or maybe even made it mandatory in the meantime?) into creating a user account etc. Please don't take Insomnia down that path, and make all enterprise/collab/cloud feature optional while still focusing on the single-user, simple to use and setup program it has been so far.
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  I had asked a similar question before, and I think this ^ is exactly why they built Designer and Insomnia Core (the original) as separate products. Freedom of choice ftw!
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  This is one of the key reasons we didn't build this functionality into Insomnia and instead released a separate application. Users love our products for their simplicity and the streamlined nature and we fully intend to keep that essence going forward.
  - tornato7 6y ago
    Thank you! I understand that from a company valuation/investor perspective it's important to have enterprise features and cloud collaboration / account sign up nonsense. But too many simple tools have gone down that path and ended up becoming bloated and frustrating. Dropbox is a big offender here too IMO.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    Thank you. For both the tools you make and this reply explaining your reasoning on this one. It is really refreshing to see someone explaining their simple first-principle reasoning on something as controversial as this, and that specific decision working out great for the users. Far too often we see a major industry player doing something drastic that users dislike (e.g., Postman bloat situation), and the competitors simply following the suit because "our competitors are big and smart, so it must be a good change that we should follow as well".
xrendan 6y ago
For Ubuntu, both insomnia and insomnia designer point to the same package 'insomnia' on your download page.
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  Currently working on the builds for linux and windows. Some left over issues from merging repositories. New builds should be up soon!
  - neogodless 6y ago
    All that might explain it. Got hit with Smart Screen on Windows and then an error during install that triggered an abort.
    - reynolek 6y ago
      The latest build fixes the install issue on windows. It turns out that one of the node modules had a really long path, causing it to exceed the max path length in windows.
      - neogodless 6y ago
        Yes - the whole team has been responsive and all over it!
    - rmharrison 6y ago
      Same issue (Core and Designer instructions are identical) on Ubuntu 19.10 with `sudo snap install insomnia`. About shows "Insomnia REST Client Version 7.1.1"
- mikecoles 6y ago
  I found the .deb file on the github releases page at https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases
Waterluvian 6y ago
What I need is a sensible kit of software to let me generate API documentation without the opinions on, "this is actually a web server to be hosted". I just want markdown or HTML outputs without "Try it now!" or other features. But I also don't want to hand-roll my docs by just writing Sphinx. I like the "provide a schema definition then supplement with hand-written docs and customization" approach.
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  We've been discussing this internally quite a bit and is something we want to provide through our plugin infrastructure which is the ability to choose the type of specification, it's output and preview mechanisms. This way the workflow can be specialized for your needs.
- martinni 6y ago
  Have you looked into protobuf? Seems like it should do the trick
petersellers 6y ago
It would be great if this supported gRPC. Other than BloomRPC, I'm not aware of any tools like this for protobuf/gRPC APIs.
- gschier 6y ago
  We've been seeing the popularity of things like grpc and websockets and are currently looking into ways we can support these in the future.
dang 6y ago
Url changed from https://konghq.com/blog/introducing-insomnia-designer-an-open-source-collaborative-editor-for-api-design/ https://konghq.com/blog/introducing-insomnia-designer-an-ope..., which points to this, which was also the URL in a duplicate thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23021368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23021368.
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  I think the URL is different now? The other blog was on Kong's website and was different.
  - dang 6y ago
    Yes, the submission was originally to Kong and we changed it to what it is now. Does that answer your question or am I missing something?
benatkin 6y ago
This is nice. I like how there's a switch that flips between design and testing, and how testing has the familiar insomnia view, with environments. In the design view, I suggest having a way to show only part of the OpenAPI YAML spec, beyond code folding, because the full YAML document is a lot to scroll through. A way to jump from the view on the right side to the definition in the YAML spec is also important. I suggest adding triple dots at the end of each to show a menu, with "reveal in spec" or something like that. This is very polished for an initial release. It's a better intro to OpenAPI for someone who is completely new to it than the SmartBear one. Congrats!
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  Thank you! We hope to continue to make it even better! We have a big sidebar update coming up soon, keep an eye on the github issues for more info, and your comments contain some good insights us to think about.
- neogodless 6y ago
  I put in a Feature Request. Since OpenAPI supports file references, and for any API of substance, you'll probably prefer living with the file broken down into logical sections, it's just so much more straightforward to work with. But a lot of libraries and software don't support these references!
dragosmocrii 6y ago
I love Insomnia! Also, thank you for making it available on Linux too <3
- sonicyeti 6y ago
  八(＾□＾*)
simzor 6y ago
Insomnia is great. This will be a great addition! However, it annoys me that the image showing the tool is not zoomable or clickable, so you can barely see what it's showing.
- gschier 6y ago
  That's great feedback. We'll see if we can get that updated.
gumby 6y ago
Can someone help an old fart here? When I think of "API" I think of, say sections 2 and 3 of the unix man pages. Calling conventions basically. When I write a library I don't need a special tool -- the functions and data structures in my external .h files by definition define the API. This tool is clearly for something related to that (how you call a remote web web service) and clearly people find it, and tools like it valuable. But I don't get it. This isn't me saying "you kids are dummies for needing this thing" -- I'm asking the opposite: "I don't get it: what important things am I not understanding?"
- rojoca 6y ago
  A web service can provide a schema similar to a header file to define its API but there is no "standard" format for this schema, nor is there a standard location to look for such a thing. You can of course provide your own schema. This tool lets you design an API for a web service in a popular schema format called OpenAPI.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Thanks
    - mikejulietbravo 6y ago
      Agree - appreciate the clarity of the answer.
omeze 6y ago
This is great, but I noticed that the output doesn't fully support OpenAPI 3.0.0, particularly the use of "oneOf" responses. I believe it's because you're calling out to swagger-ui and swagger-ui doesn't support these: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/3803 https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/3803 A lot of APIs in the wild actually do utilize oneOf responses (e.g. for returning rich structured errors that have an enum and a human-readable description but which all share the same HTTP status code) -- I know at least at $DAYJOB this was a major deterrent from using OpenAPI.
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  Great point, we started with OpenAPI / Swagger-UI as it's the popular specification but we do want the application to support more specifications and preview / output libraries. We just had to start somewhere.
thegagne 6y ago
I tried importing a swagger 2.0 json, and I'm not sure it worked right? The debug side works fine, but the designer side just has the json on a single line, and nothing in the left panel. I assume it's supposed to have something there based on the screenshots where I can manipulate and change the spec?
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  JSON support is a little bit lacking at the moment, something we plan to address soon. If the JSON isn't private we'd definitely love to take a look, do you mind opening an issue?
rak 6y ago
I started using this today. It's good so far. I can now stop spinning up swagger editor in a container and work with this. Going to switch over to this fully since I was already using Insomnia.
mderazon 6y ago
How do you keep your services Api documentation updated in your organization? Are you generating openapi specs directly from code? Or do you build it with a ui designer tool like this ? Creating the documentation is a hard, but having developers keep updating it is even harder. And if it's not updated regularly, it loses its value quickly
- Nijikokun 6y ago
  Great question. We do believe in Design First Development, where the idea is designed out with the key party members as a part of that group. In this case, it could be the Lead Architect, or Team Lead, or Individual Contributor starting the specification and working closely in source control / pair programming to define that first draft to prevent things tech debt, refactoring, recoding, etc. Once it's agree'd upon and merged into the codebase, we believe from there, should you setup a pipeline to have it be updated from the codebase, which commits to the repository, that should be allowed as long as the process is kept. So you still have tests against your specification that ensure your implementation works as described, and your specification is validated and enforced with the right policies. We have some known gaps around policy enforcement and placement that we intend to correct soon. But, this is our belief. As far as UI driven design, or Text driven design, I personally believe that both can be achieved. Not everyone knows these specifications and having an interface can on-board those individuals and get them ramped up quickly to service the needs and demands of the business. Where the text form is useful for advanced users, quick changes, automation pipelines, testing frameworks, diff checking, and so forth. So we don't want to ultimately get rid of that layer either. I think the best approach will be some form of a balancing act. Would love to hear feedback on this.
  - mderazon 6y ago
    Thank you for the reply, For node.js, so far I haven't found any good tool to generate openapi specs from code. If by chance you have recommendations I would be happy to know some other complimenting tooling for it
mrwnmonm 6y ago
Maybe the next step is testing and generating docs, right?
- gschier 6y ago
  Exactly ;)
bishalb 6y ago
I used insomnia for a while, it was ok and felt more lightweight than postman. But then after using it for about a month it started crashing for no reason and since then I have tried using it a few more times but it crashes on me Everytime. I even updated to the latest version, did a clean uninstall using iobit and reinstalled but same.
- gschier 6y ago
  This might help https://support.insomnia.rest/article/66-app-not-responding https://support.insomnia.rest/article/66-app-not-responding
lildata 6y ago
Insomnia is great. Support for Flatpak would be awesome ;-) https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/1812 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/1812

317 points by Nijikokun 6y ago

This looks like a good product, and I'm happy to hear the "Core" will remain as a dedicated, simple tool. One minor bit of copyedit help; on the landing page, near the bottom: >"most users love it for how simple and easy it is to use. In order to maintain this core tenant..." tenant (resident) -> tenet (principle)

mikejulietbravo 6y ago

Love this and especially the Kubernetes features. One question - is everything in the original Insomnia in Insomnia Designer too, or are they completely different?

gschier 6y ago
Yes, everything in Insomnia (Core) is now part of Insomnia Designer. You will notice the Core interface when switching to "debug" mode for an API spec. This mode provides access to existing Insomnia features to let you manually test and debug your API during the design process.
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  Is the plan to merge them ever or are they going to stay separate? Also, if I use Designer then I prob don't need to use the orgiinal Insomnia, right?
  - Nijikokun 6y ago
    Separate! I like to say that designer is more when you're building and creating, and core is when you're trying out other apis or just scratch padding some requests.

mikejulietbravo 6y ago

I just asked this on another version of this I saw, but how does this compare to the original Insomnia? Are they two completely different products?

Nijikokun 6y ago
Insomnia is an extremely powerful tool, but most users love it for how simple and easy it is to use. In order to maintain this core tenant, Designer needs to be simple too, which is why we're releasing Insomnia Designer as a separate application, focused entirely on API design.
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  I asked the question elsewhere, but this doesn't mean that there's any loss of test functionality in Insomnia Designer compared to the original, right?
  - gschier 6y ago
    Currently, you can do everything you can do in Insomnia Core but it's exposed in a secondary workflow. Essentially, Designer helps you design APIs and Core helps you explore them. Depending on what you're doing, you may want to use Designer, Core, or both.
- enlyth 6y ago
  I want to say that I use Insomnia daily and love it so much more than Postman, thanks for all your work.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

kh_hk 6y ago

Wow, big congrats to the folks behind Insomnia. I am amazed at the rate they keep improving it. The tool is ultra polished and the love that goes into it is so clear. If you have not tried it, I recommend it!

Kovah 6y ago

For people searching for similar tools: I can highly recommend Stoplight Studio. https://stoplight.io/studio/ https://stoplight.io/studio/ Depending on your actual API structure you may be able to generate a complete specification without ever touching any yaml. Been using it for the LinkAce API docs and it helped me a lot: https://stoplight.io/p/docs/gh/kovah/linkace-api-docs https://stoplight.io/p/docs/gh/kovah/linkace-api-docs

graphememes 6y ago
it always outputs broken specs for me
- XVincentX 6y ago
  Would love to know more. Can we chat? vincenzo at stoplight dot io

julianlam 6y ago

As someone who just recently completed a Read API overhaul for NodeBB (https://docs.nodebb.org/api/ https://docs.nodebb.org/api/), the more I read into Swagger/OpenAPI, the more out of my depth I feel. I thought I did something cool by taking our existing express routes, generating a boilerplate OpenAPI spec, and then integrating it with our testing suite so the response type-matched the spec... but now I'm reading all this stuff about spec-first approaches to software design and I'm feeling like both my app and I are dinosaurs, and all this is only meant for brand-spanking new software.

mikejulietbravo 6y ago
I think you're being a bit hard on yourself - moving to spec-first is super hard. Erin McKean from Wordnik helped create OpenAPI spec and she talks a lot about how it's a journey to get there.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
Don’t worry about it. You have something that works so you are already ahead. Following every trend just drives you crazy.

awang1596 6y ago

I see that Insomnia Designer supports Graph QL. Are there any templates or tutorials for building something simple using GraphQL?

Nijikokun 6y ago
We have some documentation on GraphQL, would be good to maybe start some tutorials and build guides! Great idea!
- mikejulietbravo 6y ago
  +1 for this, maybe the people at Apollo could help?

nbrempel 6y ago

This is great. I'm a huge fan of Insomnia for testing APIs and I've been looking for a good tool to help with the design aspect.

littlecranky67 6y ago

I love Insomnia and use it almost daily and in the hope the developers/owners are reading here on Hacker News: Please don't make the same mistake as Postman. I used Postman years ago until it shifted from being a simple tool to test and develop REST Apis to something now called "Cloud Collaboration Platform", got way to much bloat and tries to nudge me (or maybe even made it mandatory in the meantime?) into creating a user account etc. Please don't take Insomnia down that path, and make all enterprise/collab/cloud feature optional while still focusing on the single-user, simple to use and setup program it has been so far.

mikejulietbravo 6y ago
I had asked a similar question before, and I think this ^ is exactly why they built Designer and Insomnia Core (the original) as separate products. Freedom of choice ftw!
Nijikokun 6y ago
This is one of the key reasons we didn't build this functionality into Insomnia and instead released a separate application. Users love our products for their simplicity and the streamlined nature and we fully intend to keep that essence going forward.
- tornato7 6y ago
  Thank you! I understand that from a company valuation/investor perspective it's important to have enterprise features and cloud collaboration / account sign up nonsense. But too many simple tools have gone down that path and ended up becoming bloated and frustrating. Dropbox is a big offender here too IMO.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Thank you. For both the tools you make and this reply explaining your reasoning on this one. It is really refreshing to see someone explaining their simple first-principle reasoning on something as controversial as this, and that specific decision working out great for the users. Far too often we see a major industry player doing something drastic that users dislike (e.g., Postman bloat situation), and the competitors simply following the suit because "our competitors are big and smart, so it must be a good change that we should follow as well".

xrendan 6y ago

For Ubuntu, both insomnia and insomnia designer point to the same package 'insomnia' on your download page.

Nijikokun 6y ago
Currently working on the builds for linux and windows. Some left over issues from merging repositories. New builds should be up soon!
- neogodless 6y ago
  All that might explain it. Got hit with Smart Screen on Windows and then an error during install that triggered an abort.
  - reynolek 6y ago
    The latest build fixes the install issue on windows. It turns out that one of the node modules had a really long path, causing it to exceed the max path length in windows.
    - neogodless 6y ago
      Yes - the whole team has been responsive and all over it!
  - rmharrison 6y ago
    Same issue (Core and Designer instructions are identical) on Ubuntu 19.10 with `sudo snap install insomnia`. About shows "Insomnia REST Client Version 7.1.1"
mikecoles 6y ago
I found the .deb file on the github releases page at https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases

Waterluvian 6y ago

What I need is a sensible kit of software to let me generate API documentation without the opinions on, "this is actually a web server to be hosted". I just want markdown or HTML outputs without "Try it now!" or other features. But I also don't want to hand-roll my docs by just writing Sphinx. I like the "provide a schema definition then supplement with hand-written docs and customization" approach.

Nijikokun 6y ago
We've been discussing this internally quite a bit and is something we want to provide through our plugin infrastructure which is the ability to choose the type of specification, it's output and preview mechanisms. This way the workflow can be specialized for your needs.
martinni 6y ago
Have you looked into protobuf? Seems like it should do the trick

petersellers 6y ago

It would be great if this supported gRPC. Other than BloomRPC, I'm not aware of any tools like this for protobuf/gRPC APIs.

gschier 6y ago
We've been seeing the popularity of things like grpc and websockets and are currently looking into ways we can support these in the future.

dang 6y ago

Url changed from https://konghq.com/blog/introducing-insomnia-designer-an-open-source-collaborative-editor-for-api-design/ https://konghq.com/blog/introducing-insomnia-designer-an-ope..., which points to this, which was also the URL in a duplicate thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23021368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23021368.

mikejulietbravo 6y ago
I think the URL is different now? The other blog was on Kong's website and was different.
- dang 6y ago
  Yes, the submission was originally to Kong and we changed it to what it is now. Does that answer your question or am I missing something?

benatkin 6y ago

This is nice. I like how there's a switch that flips between design and testing, and how testing has the familiar insomnia view, with environments. In the design view, I suggest having a way to show only part of the OpenAPI YAML spec, beyond code folding, because the full YAML document is a lot to scroll through. A way to jump from the view on the right side to the definition in the YAML spec is also important. I suggest adding triple dots at the end of each to show a menu, with "reveal in spec" or something like that. This is very polished for an initial release. It's a better intro to OpenAPI for someone who is completely new to it than the SmartBear one. Congrats!

Nijikokun 6y ago
Thank you! We hope to continue to make it even better! We have a big sidebar update coming up soon, keep an eye on the github issues for more info, and your comments contain some good insights us to think about.
neogodless 6y ago
I put in a Feature Request. Since OpenAPI supports file references, and for any API of substance, you'll probably prefer living with the file broken down into logical sections, it's just so much more straightforward to work with. But a lot of libraries and software don't support these references!

dragosmocrii 6y ago

I love Insomnia! Also, thank you for making it available on Linux too <3

sonicyeti 6y ago
八(＾□＾*)

simzor 6y ago

Insomnia is great. This will be a great addition! However, it annoys me that the image showing the tool is not zoomable or clickable, so you can barely see what it's showing.

gschier 6y ago
That's great feedback. We'll see if we can get that updated.

gumby 6y ago

Can someone help an old fart here? When I think of "API" I think of, say sections 2 and 3 of the unix man pages. Calling conventions basically. When I write a library I don't need a special tool -- the functions and data structures in my external .h files by definition define the API. This tool is clearly for something related to that (how you call a remote web web service) and clearly people find it, and tools like it valuable. But I don't get it. This isn't me saying "you kids are dummies for needing this thing" -- I'm asking the opposite: "I don't get it: what important things am I not understanding?"

rojoca 6y ago
A web service can provide a schema similar to a header file to define its API but there is no "standard" format for this schema, nor is there a standard location to look for such a thing. You can of course provide your own schema. This tool lets you design an API for a web service in a popular schema format called OpenAPI.
- gumby 6y ago
  Thanks
  - mikejulietbravo 6y ago
    Agree - appreciate the clarity of the answer.

omeze 6y ago

This is great, but I noticed that the output doesn't fully support OpenAPI 3.0.0, particularly the use of "oneOf" responses. I believe it's because you're calling out to swagger-ui and swagger-ui doesn't support these: https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/3803 https://github.com/swagger-api/swagger-ui/issues/3803 A lot of APIs in the wild actually do utilize oneOf responses (e.g. for returning rich structured errors that have an enum and a human-readable description but which all share the same HTTP status code) -- I know at least at $DAYJOB this was a major deterrent from using OpenAPI.

Nijikokun 6y ago
Great point, we started with OpenAPI / Swagger-UI as it's the popular specification but we do want the application to support more specifications and preview / output libraries. We just had to start somewhere.

thegagne 6y ago

I tried importing a swagger 2.0 json, and I'm not sure it worked right? The debug side works fine, but the designer side just has the json on a single line, and nothing in the left panel. I assume it's supposed to have something there based on the screenshots where I can manipulate and change the spec?

Nijikokun 6y ago
JSON support is a little bit lacking at the moment, something we plan to address soon. If the JSON isn't private we'd definitely love to take a look, do you mind opening an issue?

rak 6y ago

I started using this today. It's good so far. I can now stop spinning up swagger editor in a container and work with this. Going to switch over to this fully since I was already using Insomnia.

mderazon 6y ago

How do you keep your services Api documentation updated in your organization? Are you generating openapi specs directly from code? Or do you build it with a ui designer tool like this ? Creating the documentation is a hard, but having developers keep updating it is even harder. And if it's not updated regularly, it loses its value quickly

Nijikokun 6y ago
Great question. We do believe in Design First Development, where the idea is designed out with the key party members as a part of that group. In this case, it could be the Lead Architect, or Team Lead, or Individual Contributor starting the specification and working closely in source control / pair programming to define that first draft to prevent things tech debt, refactoring, recoding, etc. Once it's agree'd upon and merged into the codebase, we believe from there, should you setup a pipeline to have it be updated from the codebase, which commits to the repository, that should be allowed as long as the process is kept. So you still have tests against your specification that ensure your implementation works as described, and your specification is validated and enforced with the right policies. We have some known gaps around policy enforcement and placement that we intend to correct soon. But, this is our belief. As far as UI driven design, or Text driven design, I personally believe that both can be achieved. Not everyone knows these specifications and having an interface can on-board those individuals and get them ramped up quickly to service the needs and demands of the business. Where the text form is useful for advanced users, quick changes, automation pipelines, testing frameworks, diff checking, and so forth. So we don't want to ultimately get rid of that layer either. I think the best approach will be some form of a balancing act. Would love to hear feedback on this.
- mderazon 6y ago
  Thank you for the reply, For node.js, so far I haven't found any good tool to generate openapi specs from code. If by chance you have recommendations I would be happy to know some other complimenting tooling for it

mrwnmonm 6y ago

Maybe the next step is testing and generating docs, right?

gschier 6y ago
Exactly ;)

bishalb 6y ago

I used insomnia for a while, it was ok and felt more lightweight than postman. But then after using it for about a month it started crashing for no reason and since then I have tried using it a few more times but it crashes on me Everytime. I even updated to the latest version, did a clean uninstall using iobit and reinstalled but same.

gschier 6y ago
This might help https://support.insomnia.rest/article/66-app-not-responding https://support.insomnia.rest/article/66-app-not-responding

lildata 6y ago

Insomnia is great. Support for Flatpak would be awesome ;-) https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/1812 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/1812