17 ms·

Hoppscotch: Open-source alternative to Postman

668 points by MarcellusDrum 5y ago

tragictrash 5y ago
One time I downloaded hopscotch, and it was sending network requests to download an asset (css file) on every keystroke. I'll never use it again. Ever.
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  Yeah, wouldn't want to be a flip-flopper. Life-time bans are the most reasonable thing to do.
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    Good one!
mittermayr 5y ago
I'll give it a go, looks promising! I have had a great time with Insomnia (insomnia.rest) and pretty much anyone I recommended it to ended up sticking with it. Postman has became way too bloated, it's amazing to see how there's always room for new and slimmer approaches.
- bil7 5y ago
  +1 for Insomnia. Incredibly intuitive to use.
keithnz 5y ago
I really like https://nightingale.rest/ https://nightingale.rest/
- HellsMaddy 5y ago
  To save you a click: Windows only and closed source.
  - freeCandy 5y ago
    Interesting to see that the website clearly makes it look like the app is open source, the very first thing on the page says "View on GitHub". But only upon visiting do you realize that the repository is just for bug tracking purposes.
    - seanw444 5y ago
      Well that's a first for me. Why not use a standalone bug-tracking website or something instead? That's not what GitHub's for.
      - caymanjim 5y ago
        Everyone already has a GitHub account, most people are familiar with the UI, it's free, and it works well. Why not use it?
- itrollpussies 5y ago
  Looks okay but they should have added like a pricing page since it's not free.
  - ajitid 5y ago
    I can't find the pricing page, could you link it? I thought it was free.
    - itrollpussies 5y ago
      I can't find it either, which is why I said they should have linked it. In Microsoft Store, you'll see Free+, meaning the base version of this app is free, but there are in-app purchases.
dabeeeenster 5y ago
I interviewed Liyas recently for our podcast - their Github growth rate has been really incredible. Shameless plug! https://flagsmith.com/podcast/hoppscotch-liyas-thomas/ https://flagsmith.com/podcast/hoppscotch-liyas-thomas/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
Postman has become a bloated, enterprisey mess. I want something much simpler, so I use VS code with a "REST Client" plugin: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re... Fundamentally, IMHO, a very complex and full-featured manual testing tool is a liability, as it will lead you away from test automation.
- hanselot 5y ago
- ArcMex 5y ago
  I have got some good usage out of Thunder Client. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.vscode-thunder-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.v...
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  > Fundamentally, IMHO, a very complex and full-featured manual testing tool is a liability, as it will lead you away from test automation. You can build tests in it that can be run in automation via Newman.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    Would you not be better off making those tests in your programming language of choice, which is likely the same as the code under test, be it Python, Node.js with Mocha, Ruby, Java or C# ?
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      For testing an API layer, whose different API microservice implementations might be in different languages, and/or in languages your API test automation team don't understand, then that probably wouldn't work well. Why do you think it would?
luckyshot 5y ago
Is there a way to import data from Postman? Looks great BTW.
- MarcellusDrum 5y ago
  Yes, you can import a collection from Postman. As far as I can tell, it doesn't import the Pre-request scripts though, not sure why.
ur-whale 5y ago
If, like me, you have strictly no clue what this is for and still don't after navigating both the site and the github for 10mn (Hoppscotch is a community-driven open source API development ecosystem ... ??????), here's an insomnia vid that sort of starts to clear the fog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_k8Z8Zq99s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_k8Z8Zq99s Here's another for Hoppscotch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUz8qpP0Jv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUz8qpP0Jv8
- MarcellusDrum 5y ago
  I thought the title is fine as is, because this project is only interesting for those who know what Postman is, which is kind of the industry standard in its field. Long story short, both of these are tools used for testing APIs. You use them to test an API call using different settings, and monitoring the response. They have more advanced features of course, but this is the main use case.
suriyaG 5y ago
Is this the project that was previously postwoman? Which was discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712
- traspler 5y ago
  Yes
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
i have to ask here since this is about api. i have a use case whereby i have to do some sort of "one time password" processing via email. the otp gets on the email. that email is forwarded to a "server" which regexes the body and outputs the OTP and some other fields like email address forward. at the same time, the user would be using a browser extension and once that detects the user has requested OTP, a request would go to the "Server" which would match the two requests and send the browser extension the necessary OTPs. i know the whole privacy thing around it, this is a small project and the OTPs themselves arent tied to any banking and stuff, just office work.. then there is another thing about captcha proxy using those captcha services. i do not want users to directly access the captcha api key, they should use internal keys for accounting purpose. i have found "fusio" on github but it is terrible at explaining how to proceed and the documentation isnt that great
- newusertoday 5y ago
  if you use gmail you can write appscript to extract the otp(regex part), service that sent the otp and timestamp when you recieved the mail to your "server" via post request.(i am assuming you know how to make a post request with dummy data using curl or javascript) you can use django/ruby on rails or golang for your server, authentication is available out of the box for django and there is great documentation for api. I am not clear on what you intend to do with captcha so no comments.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    i plan to use a mail server independent of google so i can manage more parts of it without being subject to limitations of the email providers and because i am not going to "send" any email, there isnt even a problem of deliverability. my question is that does there an appscript alternative that i can self host on my server.. so you are saying email server> appscript(alternative)>django><browser ? the OTP is for lazy people who cant be bothered to check their multiple emails for OTPs. nothing sinister...
    - newusertoday 5y ago
querez 5y ago
The website does does not show anything if javascript is deactivated. Could at least show SOMETHING to tell me what I'm looking at.
- MarcellusDrum 5y ago
  The website linked is not a landing page, but the actual tool, which is based purely on JS (Vue and Typescript to be precise). Here is the Github repo: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
  - querez 5y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out!
lloei 5y ago
Am I going crazy or is there no way to install this locally apart from a "development" setup with git clone or docker?
- np_tedious 5y ago
  I think you're correct. It's a webserver and they don't seem to release binaries
- jraph 5y ago
  That's one of the things the .io domain hints at, along with the completely blank page when loading the website without JS enabled, the myriad of NPM dependencies and the fact that it is advertised as a lightweight tool while being a Vue SPA that loads 13 M of minified JS code (that's if you block google trackers), and google trackers.
Kovah 5y ago
Interesting that they replaced the product name "Hoppscotch" with "Hüpfburg" in German. Not sure what's the reason, as it's not even a correct translation. German also seems to be the only language the devs did that.
fredley 5y ago
I got off Postman years ago and have been using Insomnia since then: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia
- HNHatesUsers 5y ago
  Just tried Insomnia, and it doesn't support OpenAPI 3.1. Too bad.
  - idoubtit 5y ago
    I wanted to try Insomnia, but could not install their deb package on my Debian: it depended on a "libappindicator3-1" which is not available in my current release. I'll stick to basic CLI tools when I experiment with web APIs. The Swagger editor doesn't support OpenAPI 3.1 either, which is surprising since the OpenAPI spec was initially ported from the Swagger format.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > it depended on a "libappindicator3-1" which is not available in my current release. That "libappindicator" library being dropped isn't the first time there were problems. The article in yesterday's Steam/Proton post also mentioned it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30490570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30490570). And in any case it seems like it's either considered feature-complete or abandoned, there have been no code-related commits for 12 years now (per https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/libappindicator/trunk/files?sort=date https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/li...).
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    I raised an issue for this a while ago. Insomnia uses the Swagger UI library, which also (bizarrely) doesn't support 3.1, so Insomnia is blocked until that library is updated.
- ArcMex 5y ago
  Will give this a shot and test with https://gorest.co.in/ https://gorest.co.in/
Jiejeing 5y ago
Nowadays I am quite satisfied with the RESTer firefox addon: https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer. This does look neat but there is no explanation on how to install it locally, and telemetry is enabled by default.
mohanmcgeek 5y ago
https://www.thunderclient.com/ https://www.thunderclient.com/ This one's great. Like postman, but a vscode extension. Although my muscle memory still automatically goes to postman when I want to make requests
- szszrk 5y ago
  Wow, I love it. Postman and Insomnia disappointed me, it became a mess and push towards sync makes it a bit dangerous to use. Thunderclient seems like something to really fill my that void.
- 369548684892826 5y ago
  Perfect, it's exactly what I've been looking for! A lightweight and intuitive UI compared to Postman.
- zamalek 5y ago
  "rest client" is even better, if you don't mind plain old text files (and no gui).
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    As I commented upstream, I've recently switched to this and really like the workflow - sometimes less is more.
- ashleymaverick 5y ago
  Yeah this one is just great!
- tibu 5y ago
  I am using Thunder Client too, it totally replaced Postman for me. I really like it.
phantomathkg 5y ago
I only wish they can provide a self-hosting step.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Eh? It's totally self-hostable. I run it via Docker on my VPS.
ttyyzz 5y ago
It's funny how the UI gets unnecessarily translated into German for me :)
- numlock86 5y ago
  I noticed that, too. Especially since the tool even presents itself as Hüpfburg instead of Hoppscotch. But it's nice you are able to change the language in the settings of the tool itself instead of having to tinker with your browser's language or even user agent/request headers.
alephnan 5y ago
I was just about to share [Postwoman](https://postwoman.io https://postwoman.io) but it shows this: Update: 16th August 2020 Postwoman is now Hoppscotch
torginus 5y ago
Maybe I never appreciated the power of Postman but I never understood why they thought it would be a good idea to charge monthly for a tool that's just a gui on top of curl (or Invoke-WebRequest for those of a Windows persuasion).
- np_tedious 5y ago
  I think sharing among teams is supposed to be the draw. I don't really see the point either
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    If you use a tool whose state is stored in text files, then git solves the "sharing among teams" issue for free. So it's a paid solution to an invented limitation.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    My team uses Postman, but we largely stick to just sharing curl requests. No one seems interested enough in the team functionality to figure it out.
    - awill 5y ago
      So your team is the perfect candidate for the paid version, and doesn't see the value. I agree with others that Postman created limitations just to justify a paid version. Those types of services/apps rarely succeed.
      - devoutsalsa 5y ago
        We have the paid version. People just can't seem to bother using the premium features.
- tgv 5y ago
  Makes two of us. Maybe, if you're working on a really large project? But then there should be time and money to set up a central tool for mockup and testing.
surajs 5y ago
XorNot 5y ago
Fundamentally I've really given up on tools like Postman. A Jupyter notebook with python and requests is a much more flexible solution which turns into your actual automated test suite much more easily.
lnenad 5y ago
I wrote https://github.com/lnenad/probster https://github.com/lnenad/probster using GTK3 so it can be used on weak machines, top ram usage was 40MBs in my experience. It's pretty barebones though.
- ducktective 5y ago
  Thanks for existing...Not that I need a gtk3 postman alternative right now but for caring about resource usage and performance.
  - lnenad 5y ago
    lol, thank you, it really is annoying that for such a simple functionality you need so much resources.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Awesome.
ndom91 5y ago
Love hoppscotch! Moved to it from postman back in the postwoman days. They really cleaned up the UI recently, made saving and sharing collections super easy. And there's a chrome extension so you can proxy requests through your localhost to avoid CORS issues, etc.
tambourine_man 5y ago
I just use curl. Never understood the appeal of such tools
- blueflow 5y ago
  There are already many tools for many things in the Linux base userland, installed per default. Mankind could save many CPU cycles and developer days if we'd be able to read the existing documentation and learn to use them. But instead we are here, people are baffled if projects run on bare Debian with no extra dependencies as if it was some kind of magic.
- cytzol 5y ago
  I use cURL a ton too, for when I want to make a one-off request, examine the response, and then throw it away. Here are some reasons why I'd reach for a tool like this: • I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available • I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another • I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting • I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organise them in a tree • The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text
  - tambourine_man 5y ago
    >• I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available Requests are saved in .bash_history and easily greped from the command line. With fzf, it's addictively good. Responses are not saved, but it's not something I miss, but it could just be a lack of habit of mine. >• I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another Again, bash, a bit of scripting for me goes a long way. >• I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting That's a good one. I usually end up resorting to a real programing language like PHP or Python when I begin having to scape special characters much >• I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organize them in a tree Haven't felt the need, again, could be lack of habit. >• The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text I usually pipe it to jq or vim
0xhh 5y ago
I use httpie
- bmn__ 5y ago
  Better: https://curlie.io/#differences-with-httpie https://curlie.io/#differences-with-httpie https://github.com/ducaale/xh#how-xh-compares-to-httpie https://github.com/ducaale/xh#how-xh-compares-to-httpie
  - kbd 5y ago
    Agree, after researching this a little while ago, those are the two best alternatives. Was bit by HTTPie not supporting HTTP2, but both of those do. xh (Rust) is also faster (yes, in practice, try some large responses) than HTTPie (Python). Edit: also just want to say, in a world where "the current GUI tool du-jour got bloated and this one has hidden behavior when you right click this button...", I much prefer command line tools where possible!
liyasthomas 5y ago
Hi HN community, Hoppscotch author here. Ask Me Anything - Liyas (https://twitter.com/liyasthomas https://twitter.com/liyasthomas)
- bmn__ 5y ago
  Not a question, but a complaint. Your machine translated interface falls short of being acceptable. Either give the l10n job to a human, or don't do it at all.
  - jka 5y ago
    Can you provide one or more example(s) of translations that aren't great?
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      https://files.catbox.moe/x99gla.webp https://files.catbox.moe/x99gla.webp Your turn: what was the point of asking?
      - tecleandor 5y ago
        Probably just to know what were you talking about if we aren't fluent in any language that looks _weird_ and we couldn't notice it.
      - jka 5y ago
        Danke. Fixing typos and other small grammatical problems in open source projects can be a good, easy way for people to get started; so my hope is that by sharing a few of those, you've created the opportunity for someone (maybe me, maybe another observer here) to contribute an improvement to the project. It's also an attempt to maximize the value of your complaint.
    - radiantmilk 5y ago
      The Swedish translation. I had to switch to English to figure out what some buttons did. For example one of the buttons at the button show "Jaktplan" (fighter plane). Also there are a lot of extra spaces inserted in words with dashes or colons in them and some strings are simply not translated at all.
mkdirp 5y ago
Previously called Postwoman, renamed[0] for the following reasons: > 1. Similarity in name with "Postman" may introduce trademark violations in future. > 2. We don't want to hurt any other project's goodwill. > 3. Rather than being an "alternative to Postman", we focus to become the best available testing suite in web. [0] https://dev.to/liyasthomas/postwoman-is-changing-name-igp https://dev.to/liyasthomas/postwoman-is-changing-name-igp
- jspash 5y ago
  They are concerned that the name could introduce trademark violations. But they continue to ape the UI pixel for pixel? HN gets upset when the Winkelvoss brothers do this sort of thing with website, but it's ok when it's OSS?
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    uh, hoppscotch and postman look nothing alike on my computer...
asim 5y ago
Hoppscotch raised money right? Unfortunately the nature of most VC backed companies is to believe features are the answer to monetization and enterprise adoption. These things quickly become bloated because of that. So people slamming Postman, yes the product has become a Swiss army knife, but they're trying to figure out how to scale a business long term and that often means leaving behind free users. Don't be surprised if hoppscotch does the same.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  A bloated mess of a tool is going to get dropped by developers. The last thing we need is a something like postman hamming up our day. Logging in, online this, cloud that. No thanks. The end for me was when it took me a half hour of failed google searches to import an old collection. They are going to lose enterprise inertia, it has already started.
liyasthomas 5y ago
GitHub: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
dsego 5y ago
Is there a command line tool or editor plugin where I don't have to specify parameters, learn all the options. Instead I would just point it to an "http file" with http syntax and it "runs" it. Meaning the file contents are the http request that I want to send, eg GET / HTTP/1.1 Cookie: Accept: text/html,... Host: news.ycombinator.com Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.9 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br Connection: keep-alive And the I can just run it like so `http myRequest.http` There are some decade old sublime text plugins that claim to do this, but none of them seem to work anymore, from what I'm seeing.
- iib 5y ago
  Emacs can do this [1]. AFAIK, this is what inspired the vscode extension. [1] https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  Httpie is what I use for this. I use shell scripts, with httpie commands which look very much like http syntax. https://github.com/httpie/httpie https://github.com/httpie/httpie
- cbcoutinho 5y ago
  Yes this exists as a VS code plugin https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
  - andiareso 5y ago
    Second this one :D
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Extropy_ 5y ago
  I know IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate does that, not sure about any CLI tools. But it does look like you could use netcat to do that, for example: cat myRequest.http | netcat example.com 80
bstar77 5y ago
I've personally moved to Talend. Talend is browser based and capable of using existing auth cookies. It's a game changer if you have to work in an integrated environment where it's not possible to run those auth services locally. When I started using Talend this was not possible in Postman or others. Curious if that's changed.
clajiness 5y ago
If you're a Mac user, check out Paw (https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/).
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Paw is _beautiful_ but it has no GraphQL tooling at all, I think? (Just native POST requests etc.) (Unless there's a beta you're using?) I use Insomnia but I am quite keen to start building myself a local-cloud-based toolset so I can reduce my reliance on a single machine, so Hoppscotch looks interesting.
  - innocentoldguy 5y ago
    Paw kind of supports GraphQL. It doesn’t offer any kind of hints for field types or auto-complete features, but you can use it to make GraphQL calls.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Great. They don't mention this on the main website but I hadn't spotted it in the blog until now -- thanks for this.
      - jasonlotito 5y ago
        I mean... GraphQL is over HTTP pretty much[1]? Any HTTP client will support GraphQL. Is there something I'm missing with this exchange? 1. https://graphql.org/learn/serving-over-http/ https://graphql.org/learn/serving-over-http/
        theturtletalks 5y ago
        Hoppscotch and other gQL clients allow introspection on the GraphQL schema so you get a API reference out-of-the-box. Makes it super easy to write queries and mutations.
brian_herman 5y ago
I wish they would support soap.
nXqd 5y ago
Does the postman collection work with this hoppscotch. If it doesn't then it's quite annoying that you have to retype all of those.
lowonkarma 5y ago
very nice, needs some contrast
callmekatootie 5y ago
My main grouse with these REST GUI clients is how much memory they consume. Maybe because they are electron apps in the end, but it's just funny that nobody's devoting any time to create native apps anymore for something that should be a utility and not the main app.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  Not sure about Windows but for MacOS, Paw is an excellent Native app. Thought not worth the $50 for me since I hardly ever work on API's.
- ideologysec 5y ago
  dunno your operating system, but Paw for macOS is a great native REST/API GUI client. https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    ironically, they have a not-mac version that is electron based
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    I haven’t used Paw because I have very little need for a tool in this category lately, but I’m tempted to buy it anyway just to reward them for developing a good native Mac UI, and not restricting it to a subscription model.
- slim 5y ago
  it should be a browser developer tools addon
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Why would I use a browser developer tool to test an API? A browser is wholly uninvolved in API development.
foverzar 5y ago
Doesn't seem there is a way to generate curl statement. Pity.
- Sholmesy 5y ago
  There is, drop down at the the top (next to the request).
debarshri 5y ago
Fun fact. Hoppscotch was also known as postwoman [1] They are really going after Postman's business. [1]https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/489006-55 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/489006-55
ractive 5y ago
I often use the RESTED firefox extension, which covers like 90% of my adhoc http request needs: https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED It's pretty slim with no bells and whistles.
bdcravens 5y ago
I've used both Postman and Insomnia, but recently I've been using the REST Client plugin (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...). It's not a feature-rich, but I honestly like the workflow of not having to switch apps and work with files in my editor (as well as put variables in a .env)
- schmooser 5y ago
  For Emacs there's beautiful restclient.el [1]. [1]: https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
- darekkay 5y ago
  There's also an equivalent in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-code-editor.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c...
- andiareso 5y ago
  Dude yes! Haha I use this all the time! It's so nice to have the files in Git too and it's such an easy dev install.
- notpushkin 5y ago
  There's also https://httpyac.github.io/ https://httpyac.github.io/ which has both standalone CLI and VS Code extension versions – might be interesting to explore.
- briHass 5y ago
  It's been my favorite for a while as well. I like the simplicity and the ease that you can figure out what's going on. I don't need the ability to save libraries and sophisticated variable sets; that just makes the UI cluttered and confusing (like PostMan.)
sakethr98 5y ago
I was going to ask if you had tried postwoman.io, turns out, they rebranded to hoppscotch
eyelidlessness 5y ago
It’s impressive that there’s a clear effort to make the UI usable on mobile. A very rare thing for developer tools which aren’t specifically mobile oriented.
izyda 5y ago
While many know the HTTPie CLI product, they also have a desktop and web product now Check out; https://httpie.io/product https://httpie.io/product
- switchbak 5y ago
  HTTPie for Web & Desktop is in private beta. Subscribe to the newsletter below to be notified when it’s ready and receive your early access invite. Not particularly available right now.
  - silentguy 5y ago
    I see mac apps available for download here: https://httpie.io/download https://httpie.io/download . Web app is in private beta.
    - CryptoBanker 5y ago
      The desktop apps still require a login that requires access to the private beta.
- iruoy 5y ago
  I got access to this today. They basically started to recreate Hoppscotch (https://httpie.io/app https://httpie.io/app) and then packaged it as an electron app. Hoppscotch has a lot more features though. I still recommend Insomnia or maybe Paw.
th3h4mm3r 5y ago
Does it do parallel requests with custom parameters? Postman also today suffer at that point.
Justsignedup 5y ago
Not to be confused with hopscotch the kids' programming game which is an awesome app for teaching kids coding concepts https://www.gethopscotch.com/ https://www.gethopscotch.com/
Justsignedup 5y ago
I've been using https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ and I am a massive fan. From the ability to make dependent API calls to say log in with one API call, and inject login tokens into the other from the first's response is amazing! Overall this tool has been my go-to for 3 years now.
lux 5y ago
LOVE seeing websockets in there already!
wolpoli 5y ago
Last time I looked at Postman and Insomnia, the exported xml files were not compatible with each other. I hope we end up with data portability at some point.
ticklemyelmo 5y ago
Why are all of the API clients so intent on storing all your requests and environment config in the cloud? We would keep a directory of relevant collections and environments inside all our application repos, so they would simply be committed along with the code, be versioned, included in PR reviews, etc. But it looks like all of the popular REST client tools use some hidden cloud services. This is also terrible from a security perspective, since environment variables are likely to include secrets.
- politelemon 5y ago
  It's easier to monetize that way. They manage the convenience, your team pays them money. Once your team is using it, you're soft-locked in to continue using it. Yes, agreed on the security perspective. It's not a secure tool. For that you should consider a desktop client (eg Fiddler) rather than a browser based client
- jelling 5y ago
  And it causes a completely unnecessary versioning problem since the API client code lives separately and not even in a repo typically. There’s a VSCode extension that executes REST and GraphQL queries stored in a plain text file. So much simpler and more secure. I forget the name - maybe REST client?
  - bdeshi 5y ago
    > I forget the name - maybe REST client? yes. `humao.rest-client`
- latonz 5y ago
  Kreya[1] does exactly that. It stores all it‘s data in easy diffable text formats in the filesystem. Currently kreya is limited to gRPC. However, REST support should land soon. Disclaimer: I‘m one of the creators of Kreya. [1]: https://kreya.app https://kreya.app
einpoklum 5y ago
For those who have no idea what Postman and Hoppscotch are even after clicking the link: > "Hoppscotch is a ... web based API development suite. It was builtb ... with ease of use and accessibility in mind ... free-to-use ... Open Source

668 points by MarcellusDrum 5y ago

One time I downloaded hopscotch, and it was sending network requests to download an asset (css file) on every keystroke. I'll never use it again. Ever.

SixDouble5321 5y ago
Yeah, wouldn't want to be a flip-flopper. Life-time bans are the most reasonable thing to do.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  Good one!

mittermayr 5y ago

I'll give it a go, looks promising! I have had a great time with Insomnia (insomnia.rest) and pretty much anyone I recommended it to ended up sticking with it. Postman has became way too bloated, it's amazing to see how there's always room for new and slimmer approaches.

bil7 5y ago
+1 for Insomnia. Incredibly intuitive to use.

keithnz 5y ago

I really like https://nightingale.rest/ https://nightingale.rest/

HellsMaddy 5y ago
To save you a click: Windows only and closed source.
- freeCandy 5y ago
  Interesting to see that the website clearly makes it look like the app is open source, the very first thing on the page says "View on GitHub". But only upon visiting do you realize that the repository is just for bug tracking purposes.
  - seanw444 5y ago
    Well that's a first for me. Why not use a standalone bug-tracking website or something instead? That's not what GitHub's for.
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      Everyone already has a GitHub account, most people are familiar with the UI, it's free, and it works well. Why not use it?
itrollpussies 5y ago
Looks okay but they should have added like a pricing page since it's not free.
- ajitid 5y ago
  I can't find the pricing page, could you link it? I thought it was free.
  - itrollpussies 5y ago
    I can't find it either, which is why I said they should have linked it. In Microsoft Store, you'll see Free+, meaning the base version of this app is free, but there are in-app purchases.

dabeeeenster 5y ago

I interviewed Liyas recently for our podcast - their Github growth rate has been really incredible. Shameless plug! https://flagsmith.com/podcast/hoppscotch-liyas-thomas/ https://flagsmith.com/podcast/hoppscotch-liyas-thomas/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

Postman has become a bloated, enterprisey mess. I want something much simpler, so I use VS code with a "REST Client" plugin: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re... Fundamentally, IMHO, a very complex and full-featured manual testing tool is a liability, as it will lead you away from test automation.

hanselot 5y ago
ArcMex 5y ago
I have got some good usage out of Thunder Client. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.vscode-thunder-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.v...
robertlagrant 5y ago
> Fundamentally, IMHO, a very complex and full-featured manual testing tool is a liability, as it will lead you away from test automation. You can build tests in it that can be run in automation via Newman.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  Would you not be better off making those tests in your programming language of choice, which is likely the same as the code under test, be it Python, Node.js with Mocha, Ruby, Java or C# ?
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    For testing an API layer, whose different API microservice implementations might be in different languages, and/or in languages your API test automation team don't understand, then that probably wouldn't work well. Why do you think it would?

luckyshot 5y ago

Is there a way to import data from Postman? Looks great BTW.

MarcellusDrum 5y ago
Yes, you can import a collection from Postman. As far as I can tell, it doesn't import the Pre-request scripts though, not sure why.

ur-whale 5y ago

If, like me, you have strictly no clue what this is for and still don't after navigating both the site and the github for 10mn (Hoppscotch is a community-driven open source API development ecosystem ... ??????), here's an insomnia vid that sort of starts to clear the fog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_k8Z8Zq99s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_k8Z8Zq99s Here's another for Hoppscotch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUz8qpP0Jv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUz8qpP0Jv8

MarcellusDrum 5y ago
I thought the title is fine as is, because this project is only interesting for those who know what Postman is, which is kind of the industry standard in its field. Long story short, both of these are tools used for testing APIs. You use them to test an API call using different settings, and monitoring the response. They have more advanced features of course, but this is the main use case.

suriyaG 5y ago

Is this the project that was previously postwoman? Which was discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712

traspler 5y ago
Yes

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

i have to ask here since this is about api. i have a use case whereby i have to do some sort of "one time password" processing via email. the otp gets on the email. that email is forwarded to a "server" which regexes the body and outputs the OTP and some other fields like email address forward. at the same time, the user would be using a browser extension and once that detects the user has requested OTP, a request would go to the "Server" which would match the two requests and send the browser extension the necessary OTPs. i know the whole privacy thing around it, this is a small project and the OTPs themselves arent tied to any banking and stuff, just office work.. then there is another thing about captcha proxy using those captcha services. i do not want users to directly access the captcha api key, they should use internal keys for accounting purpose. i have found "fusio" on github but it is terrible at explaining how to proceed and the documentation isnt that great

newusertoday 5y ago
if you use gmail you can write appscript to extract the otp(regex part), service that sent the otp and timestamp when you recieved the mail to your "server" via post request.(i am assuming you know how to make a post request with dummy data using curl or javascript) you can use django/ruby on rails or golang for your server, authentication is available out of the box for django and there is great documentation for api. I am not clear on what you intend to do with captcha so no comments.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  i plan to use a mail server independent of google so i can manage more parts of it without being subject to limitations of the email providers and because i am not going to "send" any email, there isnt even a problem of deliverability. my question is that does there an appscript alternative that i can self host on my server.. so you are saying email server> appscript(alternative)>django><browser ? the OTP is for lazy people who cant be bothered to check their multiple emails for OTPs. nothing sinister...
  - newusertoday 5y ago

querez 5y ago

The website does does not show anything if javascript is deactivated. Could at least show SOMETHING to tell me what I'm looking at.

MarcellusDrum 5y ago
The website linked is not a landing page, but the actual tool, which is based purely on JS (Vue and Typescript to be precise). Here is the Github repo: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
- querez 5y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out!

lloei 5y ago

Am I going crazy or is there no way to install this locally apart from a "development" setup with git clone or docker?

np_tedious 5y ago
I think you're correct. It's a webserver and they don't seem to release binaries
jraph 5y ago
That's one of the things the .io domain hints at, along with the completely blank page when loading the website without JS enabled, the myriad of NPM dependencies and the fact that it is advertised as a lightweight tool while being a Vue SPA that loads 13 M of minified JS code (that's if you block google trackers), and google trackers.

Kovah 5y ago

Interesting that they replaced the product name "Hoppscotch" with "Hüpfburg" in German. Not sure what's the reason, as it's not even a correct translation. German also seems to be the only language the devs did that.

fredley 5y ago

I got off Postman years ago and have been using Insomnia since then: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia https://github.com/Kong/insomnia

HNHatesUsers 5y ago
Just tried Insomnia, and it doesn't support OpenAPI 3.1. Too bad.
- idoubtit 5y ago
  I wanted to try Insomnia, but could not install their deb package on my Debian: it depended on a "libappindicator3-1" which is not available in my current release. I'll stick to basic CLI tools when I experiment with web APIs. The Swagger editor doesn't support OpenAPI 3.1 either, which is surprising since the OpenAPI spec was initially ported from the Swagger format.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > it depended on a "libappindicator3-1" which is not available in my current release. That "libappindicator" library being dropped isn't the first time there were problems. The article in yesterday's Steam/Proton post also mentioned it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30490570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30490570). And in any case it seems like it's either considered feature-complete or abandoned, there have been no code-related commits for 12 years now (per https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/libappindicator/trunk/files?sort=date https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/li...).
- nerdponx 5y ago
  I raised an issue for this a while ago. Insomnia uses the Swagger UI library, which also (bizarrely) doesn't support 3.1, so Insomnia is blocked until that library is updated.
ArcMex 5y ago
Will give this a shot and test with https://gorest.co.in/ https://gorest.co.in/

Jiejeing 5y ago

Nowadays I am quite satisfied with the RESTer firefox addon: https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer https://github.com/frigus02/RESTer. This does look neat but there is no explanation on how to install it locally, and telemetry is enabled by default.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago

https://www.thunderclient.com/ https://www.thunderclient.com/ This one's great. Like postman, but a vscode extension. Although my muscle memory still automatically goes to postman when I want to make requests

szszrk 5y ago
Wow, I love it. Postman and Insomnia disappointed me, it became a mess and push towards sync makes it a bit dangerous to use. Thunderclient seems like something to really fill my that void.
369548684892826 5y ago
Perfect, it's exactly what I've been looking for! A lightweight and intuitive UI compared to Postman.
zamalek 5y ago
"rest client" is even better, if you don't mind plain old text files (and no gui).
- bdcravens 5y ago
  As I commented upstream, I've recently switched to this and really like the workflow - sometimes less is more.
ashleymaverick 5y ago
Yeah this one is just great!
tibu 5y ago
I am using Thunder Client too, it totally replaced Postman for me. I really like it.

phantomathkg 5y ago

I only wish they can provide a self-hosting step.

caymanjim 5y ago
Eh? It's totally self-hostable. I run it via Docker on my VPS.

ttyyzz 5y ago

It's funny how the UI gets unnecessarily translated into German for me :)

numlock86 5y ago
I noticed that, too. Especially since the tool even presents itself as Hüpfburg instead of Hoppscotch. But it's nice you are able to change the language in the settings of the tool itself instead of having to tinker with your browser's language or even user agent/request headers.

alephnan 5y ago

I was just about to share [Postwoman](https://postwoman.io https://postwoman.io) but it shows this: Update: 16th August 2020 Postwoman is now Hoppscotch

torginus 5y ago

Maybe I never appreciated the power of Postman but I never understood why they thought it would be a good idea to charge monthly for a tool that's just a gui on top of curl (or Invoke-WebRequest for those of a Windows persuasion).

np_tedious 5y ago
I think sharing among teams is supposed to be the draw. I don't really see the point either
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  If you use a tool whose state is stored in text files, then git solves the "sharing among teams" issue for free. So it's a paid solution to an invented limitation.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  My team uses Postman, but we largely stick to just sharing curl requests. No one seems interested enough in the team functionality to figure it out.
  - awill 5y ago
    So your team is the perfect candidate for the paid version, and doesn't see the value. I agree with others that Postman created limitations just to justify a paid version. Those types of services/apps rarely succeed.
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      We have the paid version. People just can't seem to bother using the premium features.
tgv 5y ago
Makes two of us. Maybe, if you're working on a really large project? But then there should be time and money to set up a central tool for mockup and testing.

surajs 5y ago

XorNot 5y ago

Fundamentally I've really given up on tools like Postman. A Jupyter notebook with python and requests is a much more flexible solution which turns into your actual automated test suite much more easily.

lnenad 5y ago

I wrote https://github.com/lnenad/probster https://github.com/lnenad/probster using GTK3 so it can be used on weak machines, top ram usage was 40MBs in my experience. It's pretty barebones though.

ducktective 5y ago
Thanks for existing...Not that I need a gtk3 postman alternative right now but for caring about resource usage and performance.
- lnenad 5y ago
  lol, thank you, it really is annoying that for such a simple functionality you need so much resources.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Awesome.

ndom91 5y ago

Love hoppscotch! Moved to it from postman back in the postwoman days. They really cleaned up the UI recently, made saving and sharing collections super easy. And there's a chrome extension so you can proxy requests through your localhost to avoid CORS issues, etc.

tambourine_man 5y ago

I just use curl. Never understood the appeal of such tools

blueflow 5y ago
There are already many tools for many things in the Linux base userland, installed per default. Mankind could save many CPU cycles and developer days if we'd be able to read the existing documentation and learn to use them. But instead we are here, people are baffled if projects run on bare Debian with no extra dependencies as if it was some kind of magic.
cytzol 5y ago
I use cURL a ton too, for when I want to make a one-off request, examine the response, and then throw it away. Here are some reasons why I'd reach for a tool like this: • I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available • I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another • I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting • I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organise them in a tree • The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text
- tambourine_man 5y ago
  >• I want the history of every request and response to be saved by default, so if I ever need to look back to one I know it's available Requests are saved in .bash_history and easily greped from the command line. With fzf, it's addictively good. Responses are not saved, but it's not something I miss, but it could just be a lack of habit of mine. >• I'm sending several similar requests and I want them to share a set of variables, or, I want something in the response of one request to be used as a parameter when sending another Again, bash, a bit of scripting for me goes a long way. >• I want to set a URL parameter with a bunch of symbols in without worrying about quoting That's a good one. I usually end up resorting to a real programing language like PHP or Python when I begin having to scape special characters much >• I have so many types of requests that I'd like to organize them in a tree Haven't felt the need, again, could be lack of habit. >• The JSON returned in a response is absolutely massive and I'd like to expand/collapse subtrees instead of viewing the whole thing as unhighlighted text I usually pipe it to jq or vim

0xhh 5y ago

I use httpie

bmn__ 5y ago
Better: https://curlie.io/#differences-with-httpie https://curlie.io/#differences-with-httpie https://github.com/ducaale/xh#how-xh-compares-to-httpie https://github.com/ducaale/xh#how-xh-compares-to-httpie
- kbd 5y ago
  Agree, after researching this a little while ago, those are the two best alternatives. Was bit by HTTPie not supporting HTTP2, but both of those do. xh (Rust) is also faster (yes, in practice, try some large responses) than HTTPie (Python). Edit: also just want to say, in a world where "the current GUI tool du-jour got bloated and this one has hidden behavior when you right click this button...", I much prefer command line tools where possible!

liyasthomas 5y ago

Hi HN community, Hoppscotch author here. Ask Me Anything - Liyas (https://twitter.com/liyasthomas https://twitter.com/liyasthomas)

bmn__ 5y ago
Not a question, but a complaint. Your machine translated interface falls short of being acceptable. Either give the l10n job to a human, or don't do it at all.
- jka 5y ago
  Can you provide one or more example(s) of translations that aren't great?
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    https://files.catbox.moe/x99gla.webp https://files.catbox.moe/x99gla.webp Your turn: what was the point of asking?
    - tecleandor 5y ago
      Probably just to know what were you talking about if we aren't fluent in any language that looks _weird_ and we couldn't notice it.
    - jka 5y ago
      Danke. Fixing typos and other small grammatical problems in open source projects can be a good, easy way for people to get started; so my hope is that by sharing a few of those, you've created the opportunity for someone (maybe me, maybe another observer here) to contribute an improvement to the project. It's also an attempt to maximize the value of your complaint.
  - radiantmilk 5y ago
    The Swedish translation. I had to switch to English to figure out what some buttons did. For example one of the buttons at the button show "Jaktplan" (fighter plane). Also there are a lot of extra spaces inserted in words with dashes or colons in them and some strings are simply not translated at all.

mkdirp 5y ago

Previously called Postwoman, renamed[0] for the following reasons: > 1. Similarity in name with "Postman" may introduce trademark violations in future. > 2. We don't want to hurt any other project's goodwill. > 3. Rather than being an "alternative to Postman", we focus to become the best available testing suite in web. [0] https://dev.to/liyasthomas/postwoman-is-changing-name-igp https://dev.to/liyasthomas/postwoman-is-changing-name-igp

jspash 5y ago
They are concerned that the name could introduce trademark violations. But they continue to ape the UI pixel for pixel? HN gets upset when the Winkelvoss brothers do this sort of thing with website, but it's ok when it's OSS?
- naikrovek 5y ago
  uh, hoppscotch and postman look nothing alike on my computer...

asim 5y ago

Hoppscotch raised money right? Unfortunately the nature of most VC backed companies is to believe features are the answer to monetization and enterprise adoption. These things quickly become bloated because of that. So people slamming Postman, yes the product has become a Swiss army knife, but they're trying to figure out how to scale a business long term and that often means leaving behind free users. Don't be surprised if hoppscotch does the same.

datavirtue 5y ago
A bloated mess of a tool is going to get dropped by developers. The last thing we need is a something like postman hamming up our day. Logging in, online this, cloud that. No thanks. The end for me was when it took me a half hour of failed google searches to import an old collection. They are going to lose enterprise inertia, it has already started.

liyasthomas 5y ago

GitHub: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

dsego 5y ago

Is there a command line tool or editor plugin where I don't have to specify parameters, learn all the options. Instead I would just point it to an "http file" with http syntax and it "runs" it. Meaning the file contents are the http request that I want to send, eg GET / HTTP/1.1 Cookie: Accept: text/html,... Host: news.ycombinator.com Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.9 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br Connection: keep-alive And the I can just run it like so `http myRequest.http` There are some decade old sublime text plugins that claim to do this, but none of them seem to work anymore, from what I'm seeing.

iib 5y ago
Emacs can do this [1]. AFAIK, this is what inspired the vscode extension. [1] https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
SixDouble5321 5y ago
Httpie is what I use for this. I use shell scripts, with httpie commands which look very much like http syntax. https://github.com/httpie/httpie https://github.com/httpie/httpie
cbcoutinho 5y ago
Yes this exists as a VS code plugin https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
- andiareso 5y ago
  Second this one :D
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Extropy_ 5y ago
I know IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate does that, not sure about any CLI tools. But it does look like you could use netcat to do that, for example: cat myRequest.http | netcat example.com 80

bstar77 5y ago

I've personally moved to Talend. Talend is browser based and capable of using existing auth cookies. It's a game changer if you have to work in an integrated environment where it's not possible to run those auth services locally. When I started using Talend this was not possible in Postman or others. Curious if that's changed.

clajiness 5y ago

If you're a Mac user, check out Paw (https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/).

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Paw is _beautiful_ but it has no GraphQL tooling at all, I think? (Just native POST requests etc.) (Unless there's a beta you're using?) I use Insomnia but I am quite keen to start building myself a local-cloud-based toolset so I can reduce my reliance on a single machine, so Hoppscotch looks interesting.
- innocentoldguy 5y ago
  Paw kind of supports GraphQL. It doesn’t offer any kind of hints for field types or auto-complete features, but you can use it to make GraphQL calls.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Great. They don't mention this on the main website but I hadn't spotted it in the blog until now -- thanks for this.
    - jasonlotito 5y ago
      I mean... GraphQL is over HTTP pretty much[1]? Any HTTP client will support GraphQL. Is there something I'm missing with this exchange? 1. https://graphql.org/learn/serving-over-http/ https://graphql.org/learn/serving-over-http/
      - theturtletalks 5y ago
        Hoppscotch and other gQL clients allow introspection on the GraphQL schema so you get a API reference out-of-the-box. Makes it super easy to write queries and mutations.

brian_herman 5y ago

I wish they would support soap.

nXqd 5y ago

Does the postman collection work with this hoppscotch. If it doesn't then it's quite annoying that you have to retype all of those.

lowonkarma 5y ago

very nice, needs some contrast

callmekatootie 5y ago

My main grouse with these REST GUI clients is how much memory they consume. Maybe because they are electron apps in the end, but it's just funny that nobody's devoting any time to create native apps anymore for something that should be a utility and not the main app.

_fat_santa 5y ago
Not sure about Windows but for MacOS, Paw is an excellent Native app. Thought not worth the $50 for me since I hardly ever work on API's.
ideologysec 5y ago
dunno your operating system, but Paw for macOS is a great native REST/API GUI client. https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  ironically, they have a not-mac version that is electron based
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  I haven’t used Paw because I have very little need for a tool in this category lately, but I’m tempted to buy it anyway just to reward them for developing a good native Mac UI, and not restricting it to a subscription model.
slim 5y ago
it should be a browser developer tools addon
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Why would I use a browser developer tool to test an API? A browser is wholly uninvolved in API development.

foverzar 5y ago

Doesn't seem there is a way to generate curl statement. Pity.

Sholmesy 5y ago
There is, drop down at the the top (next to the request).

debarshri 5y ago

Fun fact. Hoppscotch was also known as postwoman [1] They are really going after Postman's business. [1]https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/489006-55 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/489006-55

ractive 5y ago

I often use the RESTED firefox extension, which covers like 90% of my adhoc http request needs: https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED It's pretty slim with no bells and whistles.

bdcravens 5y ago

I've used both Postman and Insomnia, but recently I've been using the REST Client plugin (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...). It's not a feature-rich, but I honestly like the workflow of not having to switch apps and work with files in my editor (as well as put variables in a .env)

schmooser 5y ago
For Emacs there's beautiful restclient.el [1]. [1]: https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
darekkay 5y ago
There's also an equivalent in IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-code-editor.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c...
andiareso 5y ago
Dude yes! Haha I use this all the time! It's so nice to have the files in Git too and it's such an easy dev install.
notpushkin 5y ago
There's also https://httpyac.github.io/ https://httpyac.github.io/ which has both standalone CLI and VS Code extension versions – might be interesting to explore.
briHass 5y ago
It's been my favorite for a while as well. I like the simplicity and the ease that you can figure out what's going on. I don't need the ability to save libraries and sophisticated variable sets; that just makes the UI cluttered and confusing (like PostMan.)

sakethr98 5y ago

I was going to ask if you had tried postwoman.io, turns out, they rebranded to hoppscotch

eyelidlessness 5y ago

It’s impressive that there’s a clear effort to make the UI usable on mobile. A very rare thing for developer tools which aren’t specifically mobile oriented.

izyda 5y ago

While many know the HTTPie CLI product, they also have a desktop and web product now Check out; https://httpie.io/product https://httpie.io/product

switchbak 5y ago
HTTPie for Web & Desktop is in private beta. Subscribe to the newsletter below to be notified when it’s ready and receive your early access invite. Not particularly available right now.
- silentguy 5y ago
  I see mac apps available for download here: https://httpie.io/download https://httpie.io/download . Web app is in private beta.
  - CryptoBanker 5y ago
    The desktop apps still require a login that requires access to the private beta.
iruoy 5y ago
I got access to this today. They basically started to recreate Hoppscotch (https://httpie.io/app https://httpie.io/app) and then packaged it as an electron app. Hoppscotch has a lot more features though. I still recommend Insomnia or maybe Paw.

th3h4mm3r 5y ago

Does it do parallel requests with custom parameters? Postman also today suffer at that point.

Justsignedup 5y ago

Not to be confused with hopscotch the kids' programming game which is an awesome app for teaching kids coding concepts https://www.gethopscotch.com/ https://www.gethopscotch.com/

Justsignedup 5y ago

I've been using https://insomnia.rest/ https://insomnia.rest/ and I am a massive fan. From the ability to make dependent API calls to say log in with one API call, and inject login tokens into the other from the first's response is amazing! Overall this tool has been my go-to for 3 years now.

lux 5y ago

LOVE seeing websockets in there already!

wolpoli 5y ago

Last time I looked at Postman and Insomnia, the exported xml files were not compatible with each other. I hope we end up with data portability at some point.

ticklemyelmo 5y ago

Why are all of the API clients so intent on storing all your requests and environment config in the cloud? We would keep a directory of relevant collections and environments inside all our application repos, so they would simply be committed along with the code, be versioned, included in PR reviews, etc. But it looks like all of the popular REST client tools use some hidden cloud services. This is also terrible from a security perspective, since environment variables are likely to include secrets.

politelemon 5y ago
It's easier to monetize that way. They manage the convenience, your team pays them money. Once your team is using it, you're soft-locked in to continue using it. Yes, agreed on the security perspective. It's not a secure tool. For that you should consider a desktop client (eg Fiddler) rather than a browser based client
jelling 5y ago
And it causes a completely unnecessary versioning problem since the API client code lives separately and not even in a repo typically. There’s a VSCode extension that executes REST and GraphQL queries stored in a plain text file. So much simpler and more secure. I forget the name - maybe REST client?
- bdeshi 5y ago
  > I forget the name - maybe REST client? yes. `humao.rest-client`
latonz 5y ago
Kreya[1] does exactly that. It stores all it‘s data in easy diffable text formats in the filesystem. Currently kreya is limited to gRPC. However, REST support should land soon. Disclaimer: I‘m one of the creators of Kreya. [1]: https://kreya.app https://kreya.app

einpoklum 5y ago

For those who have no idea what Postman and Hoppscotch are even after clicking the link: > "Hoppscotch is a ... web based API development suite. It was builtb ... with ease of use and accessibility in mind ... free-to-use ... Open Source