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Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services
- andeh89 13y agoWe've been using Postman for a while now, it's invaluable for testing/validating APIs across our environments. One feature we've been waiting a long time for however is live collection sharing; to have a centralized set of endpoints/etc that's kept updated and synchronized (without needing everyone to export and import JSON files). There's a feature request on GitHub but it's been in stasis for a long time now.
- jamra 13y agowhy not use something like zookeeper or etcd to sync your config files?
- andeh89 13y agoInteresting, I'll have a look into whether that's possible with the current client (my understanding was that Collections don't detect or update changes unless you explicitly make any yourself). Still, ideally this is something that'd be very handy to have as a core feature within the app (author has looked into Google Drive integration in the past)
- a85 13y agoWill have something which will solve this and much more very soon. I tried different alternatives (Drive/Dropbox) but none of them fit the amount of flexibility I wanted to have with collections.
- Ind007 13y agoI find Advanced REST Client is more friendlier https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest-client/hgmloofddffdnphfgcellkdfbfbjeloo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/advanced-rest-clie...
- mikegioia 13y agoI auditioned about 10 different Chrome/Firefox extensions to send HTTP requests and this was by far the best one. It's clean, simple to use, and handles auth really well.
- dfc 13y agoDo you remember your favorite for firefox? I have never found one that I was very happy with.
- aritraghosh007 13y agoI have tried RestEasy with FF and found it to be good.
- wickedOne 13y agoyou might want to give restclient a go: been using it nearly daily for the last year and am quite happy with it. http://restclient.net/ http://restclient.net/
- Osiris 13y agoI've been using Postman for quite a while now and it's really handy. You can save requests in collections so you can rerun the same requests for testing purposes. It's great if you're deving a REST API and need a simple client for basic testing.
- jbl 13y agoIt's also great for sharing collections of API calls as a sort of live demo.
- theboss 13y agoSuper useful for testing web-apps for vulnerabilities
- vtempest 13y agoI've been using this for a while. I wish it had the feature of logging the http requests going on currently, similar to other addons or Wireshark.
- viig99 13y agoPostman comes with an interceptor which basically saves all the API request to postman while you are browsing through your site, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-interceptor/aicmkgpgakddgnaphhhpliifpcfhicfo?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman-intercepto... How to use it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxf-o_DLSLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxf-o_DLSLw
- deanmoriarty 13y agoAnd let's not forget is the only one I've seen that automatically remembers cookies, very very handy.
- victormx 13y agothe only flaw it's you can't see size of request without using chrome tab
- jug6ernaut 13y agoI know i am missing something here....but how on earth do you launch this?
- thematt 13y agoSeriously, it's a pain in the ass. Click the apps launcher in the upper left of the Chrome start page.
- jug6ernaut 13y agoAh much appreciated, i never would have found that.
- thrill 13y agoYou can always bring a list of apps up by entering 'chrome://apps' in the url bar.
- ttdmayshark 13y agoI'm glad to know I'm not the only person who struggled with this.
- stretchwithme 13y agoyou are not. I'm quite sure this used to be easier.
- hellbreakslose 13y agoAdd it to your favorites bar and then it will be much easier for you to launch it without going to the play store !
- stretchwithme 13y agoUpper left just below the Forward and Back buttons is an Apps button. Most people don't seem to see it as anything more than a bookmark. I searched the menus for it and did not find it. And it was sitting right there.
- greenbee 13y agoI've been using Postman for a while. Overall, very impressed as it was intuitive straight from the first use. However, when putting files in a post request, it doesn't remember the files for you. Also, there is no way to stop an ongoing request besides resetting and clearing all the parameters. I really hope they would accommodate these options in the future.
- a85 13y agoThere is now a new Chrome API which can help remember files. Looking into it right now.
- jroseattle 13y agoI use both postman and restconsole alternatively for testing our JSON API. Wrapped in with the console open to the Network, it's indispensable.
- ShaneCurran 13y agoI've been using Postman pretty much every day for the past couple of years. It's a really handy tool for testing out APIs in particular which is primarily what I use it for. It's definitely worth upgrading your package and I think the developer well deserves it.
- pingburg 13y agoI've used Postman for a while and it is great for those trying to understand integrating with web apis. The ability to save requests in a namespace is invaluable.
- stock_toaster 13y agoI prefer cli tools for api driving/testing, and httpie[1] works pretty well for that. [1]: https://github.com/jkbr/httpie https://github.com/jkbr/httpie
- a85 13y agoI like httpie but the app can do a lot more than sending requests now (which you might not be able to do in a CLI tool). You can write tests and run a bunch of requests together to simulate different scenarios: http://www.getpostman.com/docs/jetpacks_writing_tests http://www.getpostman.com/docs/jetpacks_writing_tests.
- abritishguy 13y agoThere are lots of things that you can do easily with postman but would be difficult with a CLI tool.
- SixSigma 13y agoI doubt that completely, citation needed.
- felipesabino 13y agoI agree that CLI are awesome and you can do way more using it that with any other UI (specially a web one), but taking HTTP API testing as an example, postman lets you do a bunch of stuff that are so simple with one click that I can see some people not wanting to dive in the CLI world, write a bunch of stuff and also having to store environment data for requests with extra files (I think thats where the 'difficult' from the previous comment comes along, but that's just me guessing...) Taking that into consideration, Postman's web interface lets you - See all the request history that you can easily reply any of them with one click - Save requests and share them (including a collection of requests) - Have and share environment variables to change, for example, between production and development API urls, password, params, etc (I know, a CLI also lets you do that, but it soooo simple to just select and preview the environment variables from the list) - easily handle oAuth and other authentication forms out of the box But you will suffer (a lot) trying to use Postman to - Handle binary input/outputs - Stream responses - Handle cookies So, depending on what your day to day problems are you should use a different tool... Oh, and I didn't know about HTTPie, thanks for sharing :)
- malkia 13y agopostman turned real useful for me while getting some jira rest stuff to work
- rdvrk 13y agoSuper useful. It's nice that you can set auth parameters (basic/digest/oauth1&2) and headers easily. I use it as a packaged app, so launching it is the same as it is for native stuff.
- te_chris 13y agoI use Rested, it's a simple, cheap, mac app and works great. http://www.helloresolven.com/portfolio/rested/ http://www.helloresolven.com/portfolio/rested/ EDIT: Why the hell was I downvoted for suggesting a good app? goddammit...
- jonahx 13y agoprobably because your suggesting a paid app to solve a problem that is well solved by free ones
- LocalPCGuy 13y agoAlso a Mac app when the original app works across platforms
- bottled_poe 13y agoI would say an app for chrome is just as accessible as an app for mac.
- ollyculverhouse 13y agoChrome can be quickly installed (free) on all platforms. If I don't have a Mac, which I don't, how would I install this Mac application?
- dwightgunning 13y agoNot sure but potentially because your comment is a bit tangential.... If you anchor your recommendation to Postman in some way then it may make a stronger statement and/or take the conversation in an interesting direction? Can you tell us how Rested compares with Postman in terms of features and any pros/cons you found?
- dfc 13y agoIn addition to the other suggestions, there is also the usual suspects: * fat fingered an upvote * vote ring detection evasion bot randomly selected you for an upvote
- karangoeluw 13y agoI'll recommend Postman to anyone any day. I make a ton of API's and it's the best tool for testing them.
- nodesocket 13y agoPostman is an awesome tool. If your intereseted in a php library to go a bit further and curl urls and expect certain json response bodies, headers, and status codes, check out https://github.com/commando/dogpatch https://github.com/commando/dogpatch.
- atonse 13y agoI love postman but am not a fan of the just slightly weird behavior of chrome apps.
- hdra 13y agoWould be perfect if it can stop being a chrome packaged app though. The window switching in OS X makes it really hard for me to get to it when I have a chrome window open at the same time. I wish it could be wrapped in a native app or even just let it run in a chrome tab.
- solox3 13y agoBelieve it or not, Postman was better (used to run inside a tab instead of its own window) Edit: here it is, both the extension (tab) and the packaged app (window): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/postman?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/postman?hl=en
- hdra 13y agoYes, I know about that POSTMAN used to run inside a tab, but it seems to have been abandoned for quite some time. I still have it installed, but it still telling to to 'upgrade' to the packaged app. That Postman extension that you linked, I actually didn't know about this before, but that doesn't seems like something provided by the original developer. Any idea whats the story behind it? EDIT: Nevermind, just Googled the domain. Its the same developer.
- a85 13y agoThe earlier app ran as a "legacy" Chrome app. Chrome has deprecated those style of apps and it's not accepting new submissions for legacy apps. I can only push updates now. The newer style Chrome apps run in a sandbox and have access to better APIs. This allows Postman to have features like collection runner, test scripts, OAuth 2 etc. Unfortunately, window management is a bit screwed up and am hoping support improves there from Chrome's side.
- girvo 13y agoCommand + backtick will help in those cases. :)
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- shivaas 13y agolove this tool!! indispensible if you are working with a REST api, or even debugging SOAP responses
- lilpirate 13y agoPostman works great. The only feature I would like to see added is to somehow easilu swap a base URL in requests. So I have to maintain just one collection per API and not multiple collections for multiple API deployments (production, testing, staging).
- sqren 13y agoYou can do that with environments: http://www.getpostman.com/docs/environments http://www.getpostman.com/docs/environments
- redwoolf 13y agoYou can do this by using the environments feature. Create an environment and add a key to that environment to represent the base URL. Then in the the URL line replace your base URL with the reference to the key. For example http://{{base-url}}/api/ http://{{base-url}}/api/
- lilpirate 13y agoAha. I thought environments could only be used for setting additional HTTP headers! Thanks for this.
- threeseed 13y agoAlso would take a look at SoapUI if you are dealing with multi step flows: http://www.soapui.org http://www.soapui.org
- sleepyhead 13y agoPerhaps the worst software I have ever used.
- mnkypete 13y agomaybe for REST, but seriously, if you ever need to test SOAP services - I hope you don't - this is probably the best there is..
- sleepyhead 13y agoYes I was in need of that when I tried it. And I still gave up.
- haswell 13y agoI regularly use SoapUI for standing up mock services of 3rd party web services and any time a web service needs something WS-Security related. That said, I find it clunkier than I'd prefer and I use https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wizdler/oebpmncolmhiapingjaagmapififiakb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wizdler/oebpmncolm... any time I just need a quick request envelope for some WSDL.
- uuid_to_string 13y agoOur current testing utilities are relatively small and compile with modest amounts of RAM. Hobbit's netcat, WR Stevens' sock, etc. We have security auditing rules that require us to compile the programs we run from source. We prefer small programs as they are easier to audit. Does anyone know how much RAM is required to compile Chromium? Can it be done on a laptop?
- dfc 13y agoDo you have to compile everything from source, e.g. gcc, glibc, etc? There is no need to get into the whole "reflections on trusting trust" spiel, but I imagine at some point you must rely on your distro? Just use the chromium package from your distro. If not why not build on a desktop/server and copy package to laptop?
- mnkypete 13y agoI would not recommend that. I compiled Chromium a few month ago with my i7 desktop with 8gig ram and it took at least an hour to finish, if not longer. I don't think RAM is that much of an issue, but I wouldn't go lower than at least 4gig of RAM.
- free 13y agoI switched to Postman because it supports attaching files to make multipart request, which the RestClient does not.
- a85 13y agoThanks for the great comments everyone. Postman developer here. Woke up to find the link at the top of HN. Feels awesome. :)
- pascalo 13y agoThanks for the great tool. I use it daily at the moment. Gotten much better over the last few months as well.
- SimonW43 13y agoThanks for the great tool. First I thought "Damn, that's no news. I use it for ages ...", but some things are worth to be reminded of from time to time.
- a85 13y agoHaha. You are welcome!
- jorde 13y agoIt has been part of my developer toolkit for a year and I absolutely love it! I hope we can see OAuth2 auth sometime soon :)
- tluyben2 13y agoThanks for your effort; the tool is fantastic! We use it every day for working with API's.
- n8m 13y agoThanks for that great tool! You're my firebug for API's.
- jabo 13y agoGreat job! Really useful tool. On a side note, it's interesting how, though you posted postman on HN a couple of times before, it hit the front page only now.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
- tzury 13y agoGreat tool, added to toolchain. If you never came across Firefox Tamper Data Add-on, this might be a great opportunity to mention it. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tamper-data/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tamper-data/ A different tool, yet targeting similar audience (us).
- munimkazia 13y agoThis tool is very popular in my place of work and geek circle. We've been using it for quite a while now.
- domrdy 13y agoI've been using this the past few days for testing elasticsearch queries, great tool!
- lnanek2 13y agoI use Simple REST Client for Chrome. This might have a few extra features, though, so guess I'll try it out. Seems like a common, over served extension idea, though.
- forlorn 13y ago> for Chrome Thank you but no.
- SimonW43 13y agoWhile I have issues with a lot of services Google provides I think Chrome is safe to use here. I don't think they're capturing your communication using Chrome (you could easily find out using Wireshark). They do in many other ways, though.
- i39d 13y agoChrome is proprietary, use Chromium instead. If they aren't doing bad stuff today, they might implement bad stuff tomorrow and automatically push that update to you. You can't turn of updates in your browser, you have to edit the configuration file for the autoupdater. I prefer any Firefox or any Mozilla based browser, but that is just personal preference.
- sinzone 13y agohttp://mashape.com http://mashape.com is a proud supporter of Postman
- politician 13y agoPostman is an amazingly productive way to test or explore an API. It's a cheap win to export a request collection, and stick it in version control to capture the known state of an API at a point in time.
- vitalus 13y agoOur team's been using this for about 6 months as a regular part of our workflow. I now lean on it heavily while developing JSON APIs
- jayjohnson 13y agoGreat tool we use during development of our REST APIs. Liking the collections for testing regressions too.
- SixSigma 13y ago"no more fiddling with the command line" If you have to fiddle with the command line, you're doing it wrong. It drives us nuts in the Plan9 community that Bash history and readline is seen as some sort of productivity tool. We have powerful shell primitives but the command line is seen as the last resort of composing them. Admittedly we have a terminal window with which you can edit text in two dimensions but use a proper set of tools with a bit of forethought and you get much more done. If you need an oauth client, write one with a few bits of script and use it everywhere. It's the Unix way.
- sillysaurus3 13y agoWhat would you recommend in terms of resources for learning the things you've mentioned?
- canadev 13y ago> It drives us nuts in the Plan9 community that Bash history and readline is seen as some sort of productivity tool. I don't understand what this means, can you explain? I personally have a .bash_profile (more generally, a collection of dot files) in a git repo that I share between machines. I also find myself using Meta-. and CTRL-R quite frequently.
- hasancc 13y agoI've been using it for quite a while now. I'm ashamed to say that it's simplistic approach on collections often made me question the urgency of writing API documentation when developing a private API. Why not just send the collection of examples? Well, we all know why but still...
- shaneqful 13y agoOr you could just use curl.
- digitalpacman 13y agoBeen using postman forever. But it needs lots of work.
- chandraonline 13y agoPOSTman is an awesome testing tool and also a great way to document APIs to share within a team. I wish it had support for storing information in responses as variables for use in later requests. I currently use globals within environments to set things that rarely change like API keys and secret but it doesn't work for things that change in every invocation for eg., it would be nice if I can save the access token of an oath call in $token and then refer only to $token in other protected resources.
- Garbage 13y agoI am surprised how many people didn't know about Postman. It's an amazing tool. I have been using it almost daily since long back.
- joshmn 13y agoI love the importing/exporting of collections. Makes sharing with my team so simple.
- namigop 13y ago{ Full disclosure, I'm the author of WCFStorm.Rest } If you're on Windows and is looking for an alternative, check out wcfstorm.rest (http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more-rest.aspx http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more-rest.aspx). It has a lot features similar to postman and adds some more, like saving requests and responses into functional test cases which includes a showing a graphical "diff" between the actual and expected responses as well as being to define custom validation rules that is executed against the http response. It can also do a single load test as well a distributed load test using several machines (http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/how-to--distributed-performance-test.aspx http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/how-to--distributed-performance-...) WcfStorm.Rest is a paid software but it has a LITE version which is available for free and works well for ad-hoc testing and exploring REST API endpoints.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- themez 13y agoWhat impress me is that far they can go as a chrome app, chrome is turning into a platform like adobe air now. It's amazing.
- reinier_s4g 13y agoPostman is a great tool, i cant imagine developing applications nowadays without it.
- cl8ton 13y agoPostman is exactly what I have been looking for. I used Fiddler for years and always thought it to be heavy and awkward to use. It's strange I never heard about Postman before this post. I like working out of the browser and Postman has just the right amount of features I need.
- idlemind 13y agoIt's a great tool, we use it all the time on our team. It's the easiest way I've found to share a full demonstration of the API all in one go, with documentation. Couldn't live without it now!
- ams6110 13y agohttps://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el for the emacs fans.
- qianlifeng 13y agoDev Http Client https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dev-http-client/aejoelaoggembcahagimdiliamlcdmfm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dev-http-client/ae...
- techaddict009 13y agoI had tried many other similar tool but all of them started crashing my chrome but Postman didnt cause any issue to performance of the browser. I will suggest Postman for sure.
- alex440 13y agoI tried postman and found it rather weird. What did not suit me: problems with remembering history - i'd expect the much labored-at settings and vars and options to be stored in the cloud and not vanish if I re-install the extension or use other machine. no custom cookies - that's a deal breaker. I prefer the excellent Fiddler tool for manual fiddling, and yet have to find a good test-suit tool. Or write it myself...
- ninjakeyboard 13y agoI've been using this for a while. I usually go to curl if I need to do any really heavy work but it's a handy quick tool.