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Paw: The ultimate REST client for Mac
- mattkrea 11y agoWe bought this app and I can safely say this is the best REST client I have ever seen or used. The others out there (mostly the extensions for Chrome and Firefox) will do for most people but this app is just gorgeous and offers some nice features on top. Some of the more mundane parts (JSON content in a post, basic headers) are handled in a couple clicks. I love it.
- dozzie 11y agoHow is it better from cURL, Python's liburl2 or libwww-perl?
- mattkrea 11y agoIf you are quick with cURL maybe it's not--it's just a matter of preference. I, on the other hand, can take quite a while to type out a cURL request with 4 custom headers and a long JSON body. While I spent most of my day at the CLI I do step out for a few choice applications. Being able to quickly save and compile a bunch of requests to replay is also nice though I'm sure you could do that with cURL or similar tools. It doesn't hurt that the app is particularly nice looking either :-)
- seanp2k2 11y agoYeah, JSON on the command line can be a big PITA, especially when it comes to escaping. The old `curl -vvv -X POST --data @foo.json http://example.com` http://example.com` trick mostly works, but isn't the most elegant thing in the world. This just might be, and it'll write the curl command for you too :)
- mattkrea 11y agoAgreed. On a more positive note.. jq absolutely blows my mind for working in the other direction (reading) jq: http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ http://stedolan.github.io/jq/
- dozzie 11y agojq is small peanuts compared to App::RecordStream. https://metacpan.org/release/App-RecordStream https://metacpan.org/release/App-RecordStream https://metacpan.org/pod/App::RecordStream::Manual::Story https://metacpan.org/pod/App::RecordStream::Manual::Story https://metacpan.org/pod/App::RecordStream::Manual::Examples https://metacpan.org/pod/App::RecordStream::Manual::Examples
- lobster_johnson 11y agoIt's not necessarily better, just a different interface that scales better to complex requests. curl command lines can get huge and unwieldy. If a curl command has a huge amount of input, that gets unwieldy, too. Same thing with data input. The fact that your requests persist and can be repeated and modified is useful. Better than looking up past commands in ~/.bash_history.
- seiferteric 11y agoHa, I feel the same way and started to make a little tool to help this, but most of the feedback I got was that it was pointless :( https://github.com/seiferteric/clamp https://github.com/seiferteric/clamp
- chralieboy 11y agothis is really cool! Great work.
- dozzie 11y agoBetter than saving those requests in curlrc and recalling them with --config?
- guidedlight 11y agoYep, loving it too. Quite a few of the Windows users in my office are jealous of this particular application.
- spdustin 11y agoIt can generate basic auth headers, handle OAuth workflows, store variables in different "environment" containers per project, export the request in any of a variety of formats (jQuery, curl, etc:) - it's a brilliant piece of software, and I use it almost every day.
- lisper 11y agoCan you automate it? i.e. is it useful for non-interactive work like automatic testing?
- a85 11y agoPostman founder here. Postman let's you run tests outside of Postman through the newman tool (free) [1]. Just take collections outside Postman and run them anywhere you want. Collections can have Javascript scripts embedded inside them for request chaining (transferring data from one request to another) or just writing integration tests. Tons of possibilities and we have some great new stuff coming up around this. [1]: http://www.getpostman.com/docs/newman_intro http://www.getpostman.com/docs/newman_intro
- lapusta 11y agoCan you tell what is current status of extension - is it still supported or packaged app is the way to go nowadays? Are you planning to go more native with something like Atom's Electron platform?
- a85 11y agoWe just push bug fixes now for the legacy app. The roadmap of legacy apps from Google is still not clear. I would strongly suggest the packaged app way for multiple reasons (folders, in-built documentation, syncing, real-time sharing, tests, request capture). And yes, native apps are coming soon! Atom's Electron is a strong contender. We are exploring all possible options. :)
- faldore 11y ago
- cwisecarver 11y agoIt's excellent. It's worth the money. I didn't even expense it because it was worth my money.
- stephenr 11y agoNot in the MAS? I'm significantly less likely to buy your app. Edit: apparently it is available via MAS but there is ZERO mention of this on the site (on mobile at least).
- lobster_johnson 11y agohttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paw-http-rest-client/id584653203?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paw-http-rest-client/id58465... (Not my app, by the way.)
- mplewis 11y agoThe Mac App Store sucks for both users and devs. It cripples apps by making it harder for developers to add features. That said, it is in the Mac App Store.
- themartorana 11y agoWhy? Sandboxing? After a decade or more of Mac apps working just fine through online sales, what is the driver - what is so significant - that makes you get so upset that it might not be offered on the MAS? I personally find the move to the MAS a sad development - less $ per sale to the dev, 30% grift from Apple, as if they needed more money, and sandboxing that renders some of the best apps out there less-than-useful. Not to mention Apple's arbitrary approval process that - if nothing else - puts an additional week between me and bug fixes. I can understand liking the convenience. But what makes it so necessary?
- 11y ago
- mplewis 11y agoI use Paw a bunch and I love it.
- jinwei 11y agothe logo of Paw is too like Baidu's https://www.baidu.com/ https://www.baidu.com/
- ddoolin 11y agoA paw print is quite a generic thing and even the shape of the paw itself between the two is made differently. Aside from the general idea of a paw, they don't seem to have anything else in common.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y ago"the ultimate" client would be free. $29.99 for a HTTP browser that can't browse.
- ing33k 11y agoPaw is undoubtedly the best REST client, but that said I am slowly moving away from it as it's not cross platform . I develop both on a Mac and Ubuntu system . Slowly migrating to Postman https://www.getpostman.com/ https://www.getpostman.com/
- vittore 11y agoI am looking at it and can hardly find anything that it has that free POSTMAN doesn't have. I am wondering, anyone who leaving nice comment about Paw, have you used POSTMAN before, if yes, what is it what it miss that justify non cross platform piece of software that you have to pay for?
- stephenr 11y agoNot requiring Chrome is worth $15 alone.
- untog 11y agoOnly if you're someone that doesn't use Chrome.
- stephenr 11y agoNot necessarily - plenty of people who use Chrome also prefer native apps.
- girvo 11y agoI use Chrome. I still don't want to use the idiotic "Chrome Apps" that aren't apps at all, when I have a choice. For certain tasks I can see the value, but for things I use every single day a native app is much better (especially just for battery usage, assuming decent coding for both versions).
- pbreit 11y agoThere are some benefits to being standalone but I'm not sure if any being a chrome app.
- innguest 11y agoA native GUI? Believe or not people will still pay a premium for that, myself included. There's a lot of money that web app makers are leaving on the table by not making "non cross platform pieces of software".
- ddoolin 11y agoI've been using this for awhile, and I think it's quite pricey for what it does, as Postman is free and offers much of the same functionality. That said, this has a great UI and the grouping feature is awesome for managing multiple projects, and in general it works very well. One of my favorite features is the ability to "turn off" certain parameters but keep them in the request, so you can switch them on/off when you want to change maybe a field or two easily without making an entirely new request. I really would like to see the ability to type JSON out in the request body manually instead of the somewhat-clunky input field deal.
- lowbloodsugar 11y agoRe: JSON: You can: just use the text section. And you can go back and forth: you can type some text, then edit specific fields in the JSON window.
- Zombieball 11y agoText entry also autocompletes variables and dynamic value function names!
- mittsh 11y agoYou can write JSON in the Text field, and it will be syntax colored if you add a "Content-Type: application/json" header. And you can switch back and forth between Text and JSON formats. (I'm a Paw guy)
- dorian-graph 11y agoI had been using Postman[1] for the last year or so and it's recently undergone a big update too which includes syncing. I've just tried Paw and like it more because: - Native Mac app (it's prettier) - I like the 3 pane window structure - A lot of smaller UX things are nicer like duplicating, Postman annoyingly scrolls down, having to explicitly hit save, etc. - Extensions - Dynamic values - Completions Postman has the following which Paw lacks AFAIK: - Collection automation and testing - Chrome integration - Dark UI theme If I had use either of the 2 above I would not be able to switch over to Paw. [1] https://www.getpostman.com/ https://www.getpostman.com/
- developer1 11y agoTo expand on the point "Chrome integration", the most useful aspect of Postman is the "Postman Interceptor". You can clone any real in-browser request (primary page or ajax request) into Postman, ready to be replayed or modified then replayed. The amount of time saved when you're playing with ajax requests rather than a REST API is insane.
- ddoolin 11y agoOn Macs I would consider the Chrome integration to be a down side as it seems to install itself as a separate application entirely, and thus in my app launcher (which annoys me, especially when I'm signed into Chrome + Canary and then it's showing up twice).
- dorian-graph 11y agoWhen you Command+Tab to it it raises the main Chrome window too which is annoying. The positive side is the capturing of HTTP requests in Chrome.
- Zombieball 11y agoI switched from Postman to Paw primarily because the JSON pretty print functionality in postman couldn't handle very large JSON responses.
- akhilcacharya 11y agoI just discovered PAW yesterday. Its already my favorite Mac app. Absolutely wonderful!
- jaaron 11y agoI'm actually surprised by how positive the responses are for this app. First, I'm a bit turned off by it's use of the term REST. It's just an HTTP client. Gah, I give up. I occasionally use postman, but more likely I'm writing a script that I'm going to integrate into my automated testing anyway. Or a simple one-off script with wget. I find that faster to use than a GUI but maybe I'm just getting too settled in my ways. What was the use case that made you switch to something like this?
- awinder 11y agoRepeated manual testing of APIs at work across different environments. I used to just keep a scratch pad but with paw we were able to set it up and distribute a save file over Dropbox for the team to share. Variables for different environments were a nice touch, I guess you could bash script to your hearts content but this was a little less cumbersome.
- coldtea 11y ago>First, I'm a bit turned off by it's use of the term REST. It's just an HTTP client. And REST is just an HTTP based architecture.
- pornel 11y agoREST, in the form coined by Roy Fielding, is actually almost the opposite of what "RESTful" means today, e.g. > A REST API should not be dependent on any single communication protocol http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hyperte...
- coldtea 11y ago>REST, in the form coined by Roy Fielding, is actually almost the opposite of what "RESTful" means today Doesn't matter. Real world usage defines words, not original intended meaning or etymology.
- 11y ago
- connor4312 11y agoI've tried to use both Paw and Postman. Always ended up going back to HTTPie (https://github.com/jakubroztocil/httpie https://github.com/jakubroztocil/httpie). It's much faster than clicking through a GUI, at least for basic requests (which is what 95% of requests are). Don't get me wrong, Paw is a really nice app, but I don't feel that it rivals the productivity of bash-jitsu for most day-to-day use.
- webXL 11y agoAfter trying to figure out why Postman was doing a double GET this morning on a coworker's computer, I finally told him to just install httpie. Took a little while but it's much easier to be explicit about a request. Bash command history does a lot of what these GUIs do.
- krat0sprakhar 11y agoYou probably wanna tell the Postman team[0] about this. They are a bunch of helpful folks who are working very hard on building the product. They'll be glad to see the bug report. Full disclosure: I interned with Postman for a short duration last year. [0] - https://twitter.com/postmanclient https://twitter.com/postmanclient
- loevborg 11y agoMaybe it was actually an OPTION/GET combination? In that case, it's actually useful that Postman is running in Chrome because it shares the same environment and constraints.
- a85 11y agoPostman can do both. Run in a sandbox or inside Chrome using Postman Interceptor.
- a85 11y agoYou can ping me at @postmanclient or email me at abhinav[at]getpostman.com. Would help in figuring this out.
- msoad 11y agoThis should have Swagger import!
- lobster_johnson 11y agoIt does: https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/SwaggerImporter https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/SwaggerImporter.
- ossreality 11y agoI can't take this shit seriously. Come on.
- morgante 11y agoI downloaded the trial, but unfortunately it seems to be extremely buggy. I'll stick with Postman.
- mittsh 11y agoSorry for the trouble :( If you can, we'd love to hear more details about the bugs you had. You can contact us via our support page: https://luckymarmot.com/paw/support https://luckymarmot.com/paw/support Thanks a lot!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tbrock 11y agoI wish you could send a request by hitting the enter key in paw. I seem to remember that not being possible.
- frenchie4111 11y agoYou have to do Cmd + Enter to send the current request
- dorian-graph 11y agoFor the record, this is also common behaviour in other apps on Mac.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoThere is an elementary particle physics program produced by CERN called PAW, for Physics Analysis Workstation. In my honest opinion, it is the very worst computer program to have ever walked the earth.
- mittsh 11y agoYeah, there are a couple of homonyms :) Didn't know that CERN project, though. We try to spell Paw (capitalized P) as it isn't an acronym.
- westoque 11y agoI think $30 for REST client is a bit too much since there are many free alternatives.
- coldtea 11y agoIt's for professionals where $30 is both nothing and tax-deductible.
- westoque 11y agoI'm pretty sure professionals would think $30 IS something. It sure is to me!
- coldtea 11y agoLet's put it this way: you should be making those in an hour or two.
- thebouv 11y agoI work in a huge company and $30 is still considered something.
- coldtea 11y agoNot all huge companies have bosses that can see beyond their noses, and are capable of comparing the time an $30 app would save you to your hourly rate. At the same time, if there was an app that cost half your yearly salary (e.g. $40,000) but automated all of your work and let them fire you, they'd jump all over it.
- ChrisLTD 11y agoAgreed. If it saves you ~30 minutes of time, it's likely worth the $30 unless you're undercharging.
- Cakez0r 11y agoThere is only really one free alternative with a comparable feature set - Postman. Postman is pretty good, but I would pay that and more for a decent (windows) alternative.
- brainburn 11y agoSomehow it does not understand what to do with my https://mydomain.io/blah https://mydomain.io/blah url, it tries to fetch https://mydomain.io%0A/blah%0A https://mydomain.io%0A/blah%0A Postman has no problems with it though :)
- vermooten 11y agoDHC anyone?
- adam-a 11y agoI use DHC and like it a lot. I tried a bunch of the other Chrome based HTTP testers and found it to be the easiest and neatest one. I haven't tried Postman yet though. It would be nice if there was a way for it to tell I have donated though and stop bugging me.
- tempodox 11y agoMight be nice. However, I do not find video an acceptable medium for a tutorial or documentation. Might be easier to make than a written doc, but so much harder for the recipient to get value out of.
- sul4bh 11y agoThe most useful feature for me is 'dynamic variables'. I can use data value from a HTTP response as a variable in the request body for another HTTP request. It makes testing API endpoints that depend on each other a breeze. I also like the 'environment variable' feature. I can easy test the API locally and on staging server just by changing setting different environments.
- mittsh 11y agoThanks! I'm the guy behind Paw, and I must say the Dynamic Values are our kind of secret sauce :) it's just one piece of the app, but it's what allows you to do pretty much whatever you want. Extensions are also nice, as they allow you to add new features yourself: https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/ https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/
- quicksnap 11y agoI normally use Postman, and the one feature that turns me off right now is the inability to import from a URL. Specifically, Swagger. Postman has these type of import options: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/4moihw0kt47f2sy/lona1q7g.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/4moihw0kt47f2sy/lona1q... I also tried saving my Swagger JSON spec to a file and importing it via the Swagger Importer, but it failed. =\ Otherwise, it seems gorgeous!
- mittsh 11y agoHey, are you using that Swagger Importer? https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/SwaggerImporter https://luckymarmot.com/paw/extensions/SwaggerImporter If it fails, I'm happy to help. Can you share with us the Swagger file you're trying to import (support@luckymarmot.com)? Will be happy to help. (I'm the Paw founder)