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Question: Do I miss something by not using Postman? My alternatives for development are "Edit and Resend" of a request (in Firefox) and plain old curl scripts f

by pjio 1y ago

Question: Do I miss something by not using Postman? My alternatives for development are "Edit and Resend" of a request (in Firefox) and plain old curl scripts for reusable examples.

danparsonson 1y ago
Not Postman specifically but a client like that will allow you to prepare a whole set of different requests and save them so you can build up a test suite, plus some of them do things like scripting, chaining requests together etc. It's like the difference between a text editor and an IDE, so it depends on your needs really.
ActorNightly 1y ago
The only nice feature is being able to paste a url, get parsed parameters, and then edit all the things using the UI. Other then that, its same old curl.
- aembleton 1y ago
  Being able to easily switch between dev, stage and prod is useful
  - ActorNightly 1y ago
    In terms of just issuing requests, you can do the same with either python or curl and just scrips.
Mashimo 1y ago
We use it a bit at our company. We have a collection file that includes a ton of requests with headers and body. Developers can with ease load that collection file and run it against their own server, and also quickly change to a different server with just a click. I guess a substitution would be a git repo with curl scripts and environment variables? We also have some non-tech people who use postman to run tests.
- skylurk 1y ago
  > I guess a substitution would be a git repo with curl scripts and environment variables? Yep, and works well for us.
- homebrewer 1y ago
  A closer replacement would be https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev or the HTTP client built in to every JetBrains IDE + <https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html#test-requests https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html#tes...>, depending on what other tools your org uses.
  - lostmsu 1y ago
    +1 to .http file support in JetBrains and VS proper
XorNot 1y ago
These days I use jupyter notebooks and requests. At the end of the day with Postman you wind up trying to codify requests via collections, which tends to just be programming in a more limited language.
voidUpdate 1y ago
We use it at my work because one team will create the backend, and another team will create the frontend, and its useful to be able to share a big list of all the endpoints, along with how to use them and the expected result that can all be run, as well as handling all the auth for you
- aiven 1y ago
  OpenAPI also has examples and auth. But, like Postman, it is tied to your service, not some 3rd party.
cvak 1y ago
I used to use postman, before they become greedy, now I use Bruno. But to your question - I have saved based authenticated request to our company useful APIs - github/jira/artifactory - so when I want to string together some micro tool to do something in batch, I don't have to remember where do I create API key, and how do they accept it.
piva00 1y ago
I use a mix of tools, depending on needs: `curl` scripts for things I might need to automate on barebones OS installations (Linux/macOS), HTTPie on my local CLI env if I'm debugging something where I need to mutate parameters quickly: making sequential calls, many requests with varying parameters; and Insomnia as GUI where I can save requests with parameters, headers, etc. to be re-used during development. Each one has its strengths, and weaknesses, Insomnia can export the saved requests as `curl` commands so it's a nice visualisation to iterate over a complex call until it's working, and then be exported if needed to be automated; `curl` is quite ubiquitous but clunky to remember the exact arguments I might need; HTTPie has a nice argument syntax so it's quite readable to be quickly edited but isn't present without installing Python, pip, and pulling it.
pjmlp 1y ago
The UI/UX, however you can get similar workflows in Insomina (while it doesn't follow Postman's footsteps), and IDE tooling.
coldtea 1y ago
No, but you probably miss something for not using HTTPie

by pjio 1y ago

Question: Do I miss something by not using Postman? My alternatives for development are "Edit and Resend" of a request (in Firefox) and plain old curl scripts for reusable examples.

danparsonson 1y ago

Not Postman specifically but a client like that will allow you to prepare a whole set of different requests and save them so you can build up a test suite, plus some of them do things like scripting, chaining requests together etc. It's like the difference between a text editor and an IDE, so it depends on your needs really.

ActorNightly 1y ago

The only nice feature is being able to paste a url, get parsed parameters, and then edit all the things using the UI. Other then that, its same old curl.

aembleton 1y ago
Being able to easily switch between dev, stage and prod is useful
- ActorNightly 1y ago
  In terms of just issuing requests, you can do the same with either python or curl and just scrips.

Mashimo 1y ago

We use it a bit at our company. We have a collection file that includes a ton of requests with headers and body. Developers can with ease load that collection file and run it against their own server, and also quickly change to a different server with just a click. I guess a substitution would be a git repo with curl scripts and environment variables? We also have some non-tech people who use postman to run tests.

skylurk 1y ago
> I guess a substitution would be a git repo with curl scripts and environment variables? Yep, and works well for us.
homebrewer 1y ago
A closer replacement would be https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev or the HTTP client built in to every JetBrains IDE + <https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html#test-requests https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html#tes...>, depending on what other tools your org uses.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  +1 to .http file support in JetBrains and VS proper

XorNot 1y ago

These days I use jupyter notebooks and requests. At the end of the day with Postman you wind up trying to codify requests via collections, which tends to just be programming in a more limited language.

voidUpdate 1y ago

We use it at my work because one team will create the backend, and another team will create the frontend, and its useful to be able to share a big list of all the endpoints, along with how to use them and the expected result that can all be run, as well as handling all the auth for you

aiven 1y ago
OpenAPI also has examples and auth. But, like Postman, it is tied to your service, not some 3rd party.

cvak 1y ago

I used to use postman, before they become greedy, now I use Bruno. But to your question - I have saved based authenticated request to our company useful APIs - github/jira/artifactory - so when I want to string together some micro tool to do something in batch, I don't have to remember where do I create API key, and how do they accept it.

piva00 1y ago

I use a mix of tools, depending on needs: `curl` scripts for things I might need to automate on barebones OS installations (Linux/macOS), HTTPie on my local CLI env if I'm debugging something where I need to mutate parameters quickly: making sequential calls, many requests with varying parameters; and Insomnia as GUI where I can save requests with parameters, headers, etc. to be re-used during development. Each one has its strengths, and weaknesses, Insomnia can export the saved requests as `curl` commands so it's a nice visualisation to iterate over a complex call until it's working, and then be exported if needed to be automated; `curl` is quite ubiquitous but clunky to remember the exact arguments I might need; HTTPie has a nice argument syntax so it's quite readable to be quickly edited but isn't present without installing Python, pip, and pulling it.

pjmlp 1y ago

The UI/UX, however you can get similar workflows in Insomina (while it doesn't follow Postman's footsteps), and IDE tooling.

coldtea 1y ago

No, but you probably miss something for not using HTTPie