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Thank you. As soon as Postman asked for a login I uninstalled it and have been curling from text files ever since. My younger coworkers won't drop Postman thoug
by d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
Thank you. As soon as Postman asked for a login I uninstalled it and have been curling from text files ever since. My younger coworkers won't drop Postman though. Maybe this will help them switch.
- bisby 3y agoThe irony that I switched to Insomnia after Postman started demanding a login... and now I've been actively looking for alternatives (Bruno being on the list) now that Insomnia has done the same thing.
- leosanchez 3y agoHave you tried hurl ?
- winphone1974 3y agoHurl is great, especially for testing but I fear it's not acceptable by a huge segment of developers because of the lack of a UI
- adhamsalama 3y agoTry Insomnium.
- margorczynski 3y agoWell based on historical experience with Postman and Insomnia most probably Bruno will go the same way once they get enough users hooked in. Especially once a VC gets into the fold.
- josephcsible 3y agoI foresee this happening too. For me to not worry about this, three things would have to happen: 1. Open source everything, including the parts of the code that are currently premium 2. Switch to a copyleft license like the GPL 3. Start accepting substantial contributions from the community without a CLA Then they'd be legally unable to do that kind of rug pull.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- helloanoop 3y agoHey there, this is Anoop - creator of Bruno. Happy to see Bruno at the top of HN We will never take VC funding. We received around 10 inbound reach outs from VCs till date and have denied funding from all of them. We will remain independent and I have written about it in detail here https://www.usebruno.com/blog/bootstrapping https://www.usebruno.com/blog/bootstrapping
- biglyburrito 3y agoThank you for posting here, and also for Bruno... I'll be giving it a shot in the coming days, as I only learned about it when I read this post.
- 7fYZ7mJh3RNKNaG 3y agoThank you for clarifying. Just made me download it.
- bloopernova 3y agoPlease give the real Bruno a hug from this Internet stranger? He looks like a very good boy.
- ARandomerDude 3y agoRecommend you copy/paste this as its own top-level comment on this article, so it doesn’t get buried.
- Sn0wCoder 3y agoHi Annop. Thanks for sharing this looks like a good alternative to Postman. I see the company is based out of India (awesome) but wanted to know if the company has gone through the steps needed to sell to teams in the healthcare industry in the US/UK i.e.) HIPPA, SOX2, PCI, GDPR, etc.…
- unmole 3y ago> if the company has gone through the steps needed to sell to teams in the healthcare industry in the US/UK i.e.) HIPPA, SOX2, PCI, GDPR, etc. They haven't.
- dumbo-octopus 3y agoDownload Insomnia 2023.5.8 and disable automatic updates. Though Insomnia doesn't work with streaming responses at all, which is a bit of a non-starter in the age of AI. Anyone know a good streaming HTTP UI?
- ponector 3y agoWhy not to do the same with postman? I still use it without the login.
- dotancohen 3y agoFrom where do you download old Postman versions? More importantly, which was the last version recommended?
- dumbo-octopus 3y agoThe "Lite API" mode of current Postman is actually decent, it's the only GUI client I know that supports streaming responses, but you have to use `Content-Type: text/event-stream`. You can't save/share queries, but the local history is decent enough for local development. I prefer it to the Insomnia mutable fixed length saved query implementation for "hacking around" with many different APIs.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoDoes this describe the "streaming HTTP" to which you refer https://gist.github.com/CMCDragonkai/6bfade6431e9ffb7fe88 https://gist.github.com/CMCDragonkai/6bfade6431e9ffb7fe88 If not, is there an example of "streaming HTTP" you could provide that illustrates the limitation
- dumbo-octopus 3y agoYes, that is that I mean. All the modern "ChatGPT" style API's use this, so if you're building anything that invokes them you can choose between buffering the entire response and modifying/relaying it once complete, or building up a toolchain of streaming-capable utilities. Of all the http-client applications I tested (Curl, Postman, Insomnia, Bruno), somewhat hilariously Curl has the best support. It will output all 'Transfer-Encoding: chunked' with line-by-line buffering, whereas Postman only supports responses precisely following the `Content-Type: text/event-stream` format (strictly less powerful than curl, as this format requires newlines in between events, and a bunch of overhead on top of that). The others buffer the entire response before displaying anything. The `Content-Type: text/event-stream` format is fine enough, but I personally prefer to just plainly chunk the responses and let the client choose whether to buffer them into memory and operate on the entire value at once, or interpret them live as the chunks come in. With tools like gjp-4-gpt (Gradual JSON Parser 4 GPT's) you can even interpret partial JSON objects live as they come in and display complex/nested data structures in a generative manner.
- dotancohen 3y agoIt's not open source, but it's in my workflow anyway. The JetBrains HTTP tool is excellent, and has been getting better and better for quite some time.
- interbolt_colin 3y agoGreat point. I almost wrote, "why use a bru file when more established scripting languages and libs exist for this". But it seems the point here is to bridge the gap between some devs (maybe more junior) on a team that prefer a GUI while also providing a more vc/cli driven experience for the rest of the team. Not to mention, that bru syntax looks really nice.
- asabla 3y agoI did something similar as well. But instead curling from files I've been using http-files. Depending on which project I'm working on (and customer), I'll be using different tools to run em. But to show you an easy example to follow, you could check out this jetbrains cli tool https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/12/http-client-cli-run-requests-and-tests-on-ci/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2022/12/http-client-cli-run-...
- d0gsg0w00f 3y agoI think it's just the nature of how I use APIs. I do discovery with curl then just write a golang CLI for long term use. I'd probably save a lot of boilerplate using something like http-files though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gitaarik 3y agoHehe, always the same. Popular non-FOSS software always dies in these kinds of ways. That, and that it's Chrome-only, is why I never wanted to use Postman. I've been using RESTED [1] in Firefox happily for quite some time. Although I don't use it that much since unit tests and Django Rest Framework's web UI is usually sufficient for testing and debugging. [1]: https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED https://github.com/RESTEDClient/RESTED
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoCan't echo this enough. Thank you! Beyond just the login reqs from Postman, the whole Postman UI has become an overcomplicated mess in my opinion. I just want something simple to make remote HTTP calls. I can understand adding some useful extra things like variable interpolation and separate environments, but beyond that, Postman went way off the "enterprisey" deep end.
- Alifatisk 3y agoYou should try insomnia
- vorticalbox 3y agoThis also requires a login I believe
- paulryanrogers 3y agoNot at first but as of late, yes. :(
- vladvasiliu 3y agoYou can still use it without an account, although it tries quite hard to get you to use one.
- piyh 3y agoThey locked users data behind a login screen a week after postman, then had a half assed "sorry you misunderstood our corrupt intentions, we'll back out the change" apology
- winphone1974 3y agoInsomnia and postman are pretty similar these days. I like the REST extension for VS Code and hurl
- Reptur 3y ago100%, its awesome. Link for those interested: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
- Poliorcetes 3y agohere's the thing, developers probably like to eat, so the program has to eventually make money somehow. how does this program plan to make money?
- croes 3y agohttps://www.usebruno.com/buy-golden-edition https://www.usebruno.com/buy-golden-edition
- maxloh 3y ago[dead]
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoWhile I do hate Postman because its overcomplicated in everything. But attitude like yours has shifted people and money away from developer tools. Instead of all the possible tools we could have from many developers, we are now totally dependent on big tech to sponsor it, like VSCode etc. And over time it would move in direction that will promote another service from the same company like copilot and vscode.
- ryandrake 3y agoDeveloper Tool Developers are hurting themselves. I think it is reasonable to not want to have to log in to every darn thing you use on the internet. Especially developer tools. Someone needs to invent a hat that developers have to wear: when the developer starts to write signup, login or authentication code, a hand pokes out of the hat and slaps him.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoDefault-on telemetry as well. I'm reminded of Balena Etcher phoning home with the names of ISO files you flash, which leaks the IPs etc. of which users are creating Tor/Tails bootable USBs: https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/16381#note_223134 https://gitlab.tails.boum.org/tails/tails/-/issues/16381#not...
- ryandrake 3y agoYes, telemetry too! And automatic updates. They are all symptoms of companies’ obsession with having some kind of ongoing post-purchase “relationship” with their users. As a user, I don’t want this relationship! I just want to buy the tool and use it, without ever interacting with the manufacturer ever again. If I buy a circular saw, I don’t want a relationship with Makita. I don’t want to have to log in to use it. I don’t want it telling Makita how many boards I cut and how well the saw is working. No offense, but I’m just not that into you, Manufacturer.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoJudging by vscode's or copilot's or postman's popularity, login is not the issue. The issue is the quality of the tool and number of developers they can hire.
- _flux 3y agoI use httpie's CLI tool for testing application/json endpoints. That and some jq really can make some things nice. (Apparently it has a GUI version as well, but I'm not interested in trying it.)
- hackernoteng 3y agoI also have fallen back to just using curl + jq and a set of saved commands since both postman and insomnia have decided to make my life harder not easer. good old plain unix command line tools never fails you.
- _flux 3y agoYou may consider giving httpie cli a test drive, if you are dealing with json endpoints. You can put in Bearer header and JSON arguments quite easily with http localhost:1234/end/point Authorization:$bearertoken arg1=hello arg2:='{"a":42}' and get colorized JSON out from it. I use my script called Authorization to fish out the bearer token so in my case the call is just http .. "`Authorization`" .. So while one can achieve the same with some jq+curl, it perhaps is a bit more prepackaged in httpie.
- rozenmd 3y agoI started using Yaak after Insomnia and Postman both decided to become user-hostile, it's decent: https://yaak.app/ https://yaak.app/ You'll never guess who makes it.
- roskoez 3y agoJeff Minter?
- ben_w 3y agoWas thinking about him earlier (due to a bad pun on my part). Glad he's still around making games.
- staticshock 3y agoHeyo, looks like it's Gregory Schier, the maker of Insomnia: https://schier.co/ https://schier.co/
- gschier 3y agoYes, it's me! Thanks for the mention
- staticshock 3y agoDo you have any plans to open source the thing?
- gschier 3y agoNot at the moment. If I decide to pursue it full time then probably
- quickthrower2 3y agoI did the same switch. Then went to the Chrome extension YARC https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another-rest-client/ehafadccdcdedbhcbddihehiodgcddpl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another-rest-c... which I like for the simplicity. It does remember past queries.
- Eji1700 3y agoI know people don't love VS Code, but is there a reason Thunder Client isn't more popular? I know it's feature lacking compared to postman, but more so than curling?
- CharlesW 3y agoThis looks nice too, thanks for sharing! I can also recommend RapidAPI for macOS users.
- majkinetor 3y agoTeam options are behind the paywall. Besides, bruno is simply better.
- MissTake 3y agoNot necessarily so. We don’t pay but our small team still shares projects with the tool.
- majkinetor 3y agoSure, its possible, not exactly great experience though.
- MissTake 3y agoWorks for us just fine. How do you know it’s not a great experience?
- icandoit 3y agoIt limits collections to 50 endpoints. I also couldn't immediately see how to plug tokens into variables. Bruno is intuitive and has no pay-to-remove limits.
- ivan888 3y agovim-rest-console[0] has been my Postman alternative for years. It basically wraps curl and makes it super easy to make different requests from a single text file. Can even write YAML and have it converted to JSON before being sent in the body. Really great tool 0: https://github.com/diepm/vim-rest-console https://github.com/diepm/vim-rest-console
- d0gsg0w00f 3y agoThis looks right up my a alley. Thanks for sharing!
- fragmede 3y ago[flagged]
- triyambakam 3y agoNo, Bruno offers paid but with Postman it burns: they removed your personal data after upgrade and you can't store your own data locally. I will likely buy Bruno because it is a one time fee and I control my data. It should work forever after that.
- coldtea 3y ago>How dare they try and run a business and get paid for their work They can run whatever they want. I, and the parent, wont be using it. Bruno has a paid option too, btw, and I'm fine with that. I'd be fine even if it was the only option. Login and extra BS features to tie me in? No, thanks.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoBaloney. As other's have mentioned, Bruno also has a paid option. Postman's problem is they took hundreds of millions of funding that somehow thinks an API request tool is worth $5.6 billion (though I'm sure that's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down from the 2021 ZIRP frenzy). So now Postman has long since gone down the full enshittification path with a totally unnecessarily complicated UI and authentication and cloud features that hardly anybody really wants. I like Bruno simply because I believe their approach is much better: simpler UI and, importantly, as their demo video points out, collections of API requests can be saved in an easy-to-understand format in git. Much better than some proprietary cloud storage.
- gamepsys 3y agoYou can't continue to make a product worse over time without expecting to lose some customers. When someone tells you why they stopped using your product, don't brush off the feedback as whiny entitled complaints.
- zarathustreal 3y agoRunning a business is perfectly acceptable. Paid tools, likewise, as perfectly acceptable. Granted, most of software is built directly or indirectly on free work either of the intellectuals that discovered the foundational knowledge required to build it or of the engineers that built the tools. What’s not acceptable is the rug-pull of presenting something as free and trying to claw back money from the endeavor after you’ve got users locked in. If you need money, don’t offer a free product. If you offer a free product, make sure you can afford it. No one is going to judge you for charging the worth of your offering. However, you’re also not going to get free goodwill and advertising for no reason. Spend your time and energy wisely, that is your personal responsibility.
- 4death4 3y agoDo you just store the entire curl command in a text file or do anything more complicated?
- parentheses 3y agoI will usually take curl commands i end up calling a lot and use a function or script to make those calls easily. I find this to be way better for me personally. I feel using Postman teaches you only Postman. Whereas making shell tools and learning curl are so much more valuable. Plus, you can combine them with fzf, jq, fx, yq and friends to easily customize.
- jicea 3y agoShameless plug for Hurl [1]: it's a cli tool, based on plain text and curl to run and test HTTP requests. It's just libcurl + the possibility to chain and test response. You may like it! (I'm one of the maintainers) [1]: https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev
- jimbokun 3y agoI tend to collect little Ruby one or two liners for common REST calls, and now Go. Takes care of things like getting a JWT token and including it in the right header, as reusable code. Takes slightly longer the first time than curl or Postman. But much more powerful in terms of using in scripts for operations tasks.
- duxup 3y agoI just liked when I could start postman and it would just start fast. As it is the things I test start up faster than postman who is … I don’t know what it was doing when I quit on it.
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