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Show HN: Auxl – Modular API Client for macOS

78 points by theFluke 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
skrowl 5y ago
What are some reasons you'd use this over free open source software alternatives like : https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ , https://install.advancedrestclient.com/install https://install.advancedrestclient.com/install , or https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer ?
- theFluke 5y ago
  Auxl has a modular design, which can make chaining requests more intuitive. It’s also native, which still matters to many.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    I'm guessing you mean "local" rather than "native" as the alternatives posted in previous comment are native for their platform too, just like Auxl.
    - theFluke 5y ago
      I meant native as in not fully built with web technology. Which, if I'm not mistaken, the alternatives posted in the previous comment are.
      - claymav 5y ago
        I’m personally not sure that is a factor for many users, a good web app is as good as a good native app on modern hardware
        ybbond 5y ago
        that matters, at least to me. that makes me prefer Paw over Insomnia and Sublime/neovim-kitty over VSCode
        speg 5y ago
        I guess it depends how you define many, but I’ll take a native application over HTML any day.
        throwaway292893 5y ago
        Many macbook developers do care if it's a native app or a battery draining chrome embedded app. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a specialized CPU, OS & software to optimize battery usage.
        wayneftw 5y ago
        I only want apps built with Electron or similar! Makes it easy for me to switch platforms, they get developed faster, they're easier for me to contribute to and they are infinitely more hackable. Imagine optimizing your dev tools for battery life? As if I want to work on a single tiny screen all day...or in meetings, hotels, planes, trains...
        throwaway292893 5y ago
        Others do like to travel and be able to work without their battery dying within a couple hours. If you like wasting your battery that's fine, but not the typical use case for someone with a portable device. The screen size thing is a separate issue and alleviated by using screen switching gestures or a secondary screen using an iPad.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        cultofmetatron 5y ago
        I have pretty beefy hardware so I don't notice the diff in terms of performance. I do however appreciate that the battery life isn't sucked down hard by native apps the way electron does. just having chrome open significantly affects my battery life.
  - jaquers 5y ago
    Also support for Websockets and chaining those w/ rest calls. (I know insomnia doesn't support this, dunno about others)
the_other 5y ago
The “pay for it once, own it forever” is appealing. However. I think recent engineering has shown this to be unsustainable. My initial thought was “they don’t plan to update this; no point buying in”.
- grishka 5y ago
  What if it's feature-complete? People still use versions of photoshop that are 10 years old because those do everything they need.
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    code rots, Operating systems deprecate libraries that systems depend on. I personally wouldn't' mind paying on a subscription basses to ensure long term viability of a product. I mean, the core value proposition here is quite good. I've been wanting something like this for awhile. but I'd feel a nervous staking my entire testing flow on a product which has no incentive for ongoing maintenance. I'll definitely purchase it. I can easily justify it as a business expense and I hope the author of the software finds ways of plugging this product into a larger saas offering so he can continue paying his bills by maintaining this.
bubblesorting 5y ago
Is this Max/MSP for JSON? Pretty cool!
- Cybotron5000 5y ago
  …definite MAX/MSP or PureData vibe!
- Malp 5y ago
  It always fascinates me when I see Max/Live/etc. mentioned on Hacker News. You wouldn't think the overlap between the user demographic would be very large, y'know?
danpalmer 5y ago
What are the typical use-cases for things like this? I've used Paw and Postman in the past, but never for more than 2 endpoints in one go, never for more than an hour or so in one session. I've only ever got value out of them as "slightly quicker than a Python notebook" solutions for testing out a hypothesis. The only other thing I can think of is maybe as a way to pass the understanding of an API's nuances from one developer to another, but I've never needed to do that at any higher level than writing the one-weird-trick to make it work into an email to pass on that knowledge.
- theFluke 5y ago
  I personally often need the output from one service as input for another. With the new input often requiring a transformation. Auxl can function as a low friction environment to organise that without it getting cluttered. I also think a lot of API clients tend to obfuscate flows like, for example, an OAuth authentication. Making each step visible and having that extra granularity can help with customisation and debugging. Other than that, purely from a usability perspective, I think it’s fun to use.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    Auxl looks good in that respect but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my question. What's the typical use-case of apps that let you make requests to APIs via a GUI? I've used them _briefly_ as part of a development process before, but never enough to justify buying one (I'd just spend a couple of minutes longer to write a Python script). Is that what most people are using them for? Am I missing a use-case?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I think it's a creature-comfort for webdevs who don't like getting their hands dirty.
    - vbsteven 5y ago
      It’s a tool in a developers toolbox. Some use it, some don’t. Similar to the debugger vs printf debate. These apps can be useful for testing, developing and exploring APIs and they can function as GUI for services that don’t have one. For example a former client used Postman as a client to perform administrative tasks for which there was no UI yet. Most of these tools have feature to save common request flows and share them with your team.
atarian 5y ago
Looks great, reminds me of Yahoo Pipes. Any chance of a launch discount for HN readers? ;)
smoldesu 5y ago
There's no way that I'd be caught dead paying $30 for this when there are tons of platforms online that do this for free. What is the value proposition here?
- robenkleene 5y ago
  What do you think of Paw (https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/) which has some overlap with Auxl and charges more and has been in business for over seven years based on a similar value proposition (native app for one platform with free alternatives)?
  - cultofmetatron 5y ago
    paw doesn't support graphql as far as I know. THis product seems pretty useful. I'm building out a graphql api and end up haveing to maintain scripts to test out various workflows. this would be way simpler to drag and drop together a workflow for testing
    - robenkleene 5y ago
      My comment was about the market viability of native apps when free solutions also exist (not the specific capabilities of either app).
    - halostatue 5y ago
      Paw now supports GraphQL. I’ve been using Insomnia for a while, but need to get back to using my Paw licence because I prefer it so much more.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
I don't see any mention of OpenAPI support. Why? Wouldn't that be valuable?
claymav 5y ago
This looks awesome. Excited to see how this fits into the space!
pqb 5y ago
Very interesting, however what I think you should take a look at is gRPC client. I don't know any good GUI for gRPC protocol.
moltar 5y ago
Does it support AWS4 signatures?
- theFluke 5y ago
  Yep, it does!

78 points by theFluke 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

What are some reasons you'd use this over free open source software alternatives like : https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ , https://install.advancedrestclient.com/install https://install.advancedrestclient.com/install , or https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer ?

theFluke 5y ago
Auxl has a modular design, which can make chaining requests more intuitive. It’s also native, which still matters to many.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I'm guessing you mean "local" rather than "native" as the alternatives posted in previous comment are native for their platform too, just like Auxl.
  - theFluke 5y ago
    I meant native as in not fully built with web technology. Which, if I'm not mistaken, the alternatives posted in the previous comment are.
    - claymav 5y ago
      I’m personally not sure that is a factor for many users, a good web app is as good as a good native app on modern hardware
      - ybbond 5y ago
        that matters, at least to me. that makes me prefer Paw over Insomnia and Sublime/neovim-kitty over VSCode
      - speg 5y ago
        I guess it depends how you define many, but I’ll take a native application over HTML any day.
      - throwaway292893 5y ago
        Many macbook developers do care if it's a native app or a battery draining chrome embedded app. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a specialized CPU, OS & software to optimize battery usage.
      - wayneftw 5y ago
        I only want apps built with Electron or similar! Makes it easy for me to switch platforms, they get developed faster, they're easier for me to contribute to and they are infinitely more hackable. Imagine optimizing your dev tools for battery life? As if I want to work on a single tiny screen all day...or in meetings, hotels, planes, trains...
        throwaway292893 5y ago
        Others do like to travel and be able to work without their battery dying within a couple hours. If you like wasting your battery that's fine, but not the typical use case for someone with a portable device. The screen size thing is a separate issue and alleviated by using screen switching gestures or a secondary screen using an iPad.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - cultofmetatron 5y ago
        I have pretty beefy hardware so I don't notice the diff in terms of performance. I do however appreciate that the battery life isn't sucked down hard by native apps the way electron does. just having chrome open significantly affects my battery life.
- jaquers 5y ago
  Also support for Websockets and chaining those w/ rest calls. (I know insomnia doesn't support this, dunno about others)

the_other 5y ago

The “pay for it once, own it forever” is appealing. However. I think recent engineering has shown this to be unsustainable. My initial thought was “they don’t plan to update this; no point buying in”.

grishka 5y ago
What if it's feature-complete? People still use versions of photoshop that are 10 years old because those do everything they need.
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  code rots, Operating systems deprecate libraries that systems depend on. I personally wouldn't' mind paying on a subscription basses to ensure long term viability of a product. I mean, the core value proposition here is quite good. I've been wanting something like this for awhile. but I'd feel a nervous staking my entire testing flow on a product which has no incentive for ongoing maintenance. I'll definitely purchase it. I can easily justify it as a business expense and I hope the author of the software finds ways of plugging this product into a larger saas offering so he can continue paying his bills by maintaining this.

bubblesorting 5y ago

Is this Max/MSP for JSON? Pretty cool!

Cybotron5000 5y ago
…definite MAX/MSP or PureData vibe!
Malp 5y ago
It always fascinates me when I see Max/Live/etc. mentioned on Hacker News. You wouldn't think the overlap between the user demographic would be very large, y'know?

danpalmer 5y ago

What are the typical use-cases for things like this? I've used Paw and Postman in the past, but never for more than 2 endpoints in one go, never for more than an hour or so in one session. I've only ever got value out of them as "slightly quicker than a Python notebook" solutions for testing out a hypothesis. The only other thing I can think of is maybe as a way to pass the understanding of an API's nuances from one developer to another, but I've never needed to do that at any higher level than writing the one-weird-trick to make it work into an email to pass on that knowledge.

theFluke 5y ago
I personally often need the output from one service as input for another. With the new input often requiring a transformation. Auxl can function as a low friction environment to organise that without it getting cluttered. I also think a lot of API clients tend to obfuscate flows like, for example, an OAuth authentication. Making each step visible and having that extra granularity can help with customisation and debugging. Other than that, purely from a usability perspective, I think it’s fun to use.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  Auxl looks good in that respect but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my question. What's the typical use-case of apps that let you make requests to APIs via a GUI? I've used them _briefly_ as part of a development process before, but never enough to justify buying one (I'd just spend a couple of minutes longer to write a Python script). Is that what most people are using them for? Am I missing a use-case?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I think it's a creature-comfort for webdevs who don't like getting their hands dirty.
  - vbsteven 5y ago
    It’s a tool in a developers toolbox. Some use it, some don’t. Similar to the debugger vs printf debate. These apps can be useful for testing, developing and exploring APIs and they can function as GUI for services that don’t have one. For example a former client used Postman as a client to perform administrative tasks for which there was no UI yet. Most of these tools have feature to save common request flows and share them with your team.

atarian 5y ago

Looks great, reminds me of Yahoo Pipes. Any chance of a launch discount for HN readers? ;)

smoldesu 5y ago

There's no way that I'd be caught dead paying $30 for this when there are tons of platforms online that do this for free. What is the value proposition here?

robenkleene 5y ago
What do you think of Paw (https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/) which has some overlap with Auxl and charges more and has been in business for over seven years based on a similar value proposition (native app for one platform with free alternatives)?
- cultofmetatron 5y ago
  paw doesn't support graphql as far as I know. THis product seems pretty useful. I'm building out a graphql api and end up haveing to maintain scripts to test out various workflows. this would be way simpler to drag and drop together a workflow for testing
  - robenkleene 5y ago
    My comment was about the market viability of native apps when free solutions also exist (not the specific capabilities of either app).
  - halostatue 5y ago
    Paw now supports GraphQL. I’ve been using Insomnia for a while, but need to get back to using my Paw licence because I prefer it so much more.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

I don't see any mention of OpenAPI support. Why? Wouldn't that be valuable?

claymav 5y ago

This looks awesome. Excited to see how this fits into the space!

pqb 5y ago

Very interesting, however what I think you should take a look at is gRPC client. I don't know any good GUI for gRPC protocol.

moltar 5y ago

Does it support AWS4 signatures?

theFluke 5y ago
Yep, it does!