Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac • Hacker News Board

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#81

Post by pbreit » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #39

jadengore wrote: post #27

I've owned Paw for a while, and I find it much more user-friendly than Postman. It's not for everyone, sure, but the developer has put in good work and you won't regret a purchase.

I bought Paw because the latest version of Postman went to absolute shit. Never looked back.

Yeah, seems like the UX has been degrading. Still really like the functionality, though.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#82

Post by CiPHPerCoder » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

EDIT: I found more info. They're using RNCryptor.

Hopefully not the C++ bindings! https://github.com/RNCryptor/RNCryptor-cpp/issues/2

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#83

Post by greggman » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:02 AM UTC

This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be negative but I'm really confused.

It would seem like best practices is that all of this is part of your automated tests. Tests that are checked in to your repo and written in code and part of your CI. How does a native app that is OSX only fit in that scenario? Or maybe I'm not understanding it?

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#84

Post by brianpan » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:15 AM UTC

greggman wrote: post #83

This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be negative but I'm really confused. It would seem like best practices is that all of this is part of your automated tests. Tests that are checked in to your repo and written in code and part of your CI. How does a native app that is OSX only fit in that scenario? Or maybe I'm not understanding it?

I'm guessing this is more for in development or debugging issues.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#85

Post by cyberferret » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:16 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

Fair point, but I also think that a fair number of HN readers who are the target audience for Paw are not necessarily high paid engineers and are likely home hobbyists or students etc. who are building stuff on the side on a ramen budget.

As someone who is trying to bootstrap a SaaS app myself that is currently costing me a around $1000/mth, spending yet another $60 (converted to AU$) is something to think long and hard about, especially seeing as I have been using Postman for several versions with good results.

If someone can point out a compelling reason that Paw > Postman v2 because of x,y and z then I am happy to consider that and perhaps splurge for a licence. I don't think $70 is expensive for good software BTW, but I just haven't been sold on the value of it so far.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#86

Post by ing33k » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

greggman wrote: post #83

This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be negative but I'm really confused. It would seem like best practices is that all of this is part of your automated tests. Tests that are checked in to your repo and written in code and part of your CI. How does a native app that is OSX only fit in that scenario? Or maybe I'm not understanding it?

imo Paw is not an automated API testing tool. You can use it to explore/browse API's. Developers after creating a new endpoint or after editing an existing endpoint want ways to easily send a properly constructed request and visually check the returned response (mostly json these days ).

There's a feature in Paw which let's you generate code in multiple languages for any request that's already in Paw. May be people are using it as a starting point to write tests.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#87

Post by developer2 » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

manyxcxi wrote: post #30

avitzurel wrote: post #21

I've been using Postman for a couple of year now if I recall correctly. It's an absolute timesaver for me when developing and using an API. Paw looks really good. I'll definitely give that a try, especially if the team sharing features are good.

I've used Postman on and off but I just find the UI more burdensome than it's worth and use one of the more simple rest clients and curl for when I'm really trying to string together some complicated requests. Paw looks gorgeous and very nicely featured. Let's see how it works on Monday against the Niantic APIs :)

Postman is decent. But it takes too many click to do things like managing environment variables. Then there's the double-scrolling issue when reading responses which is atrocious; the response text is placed in a scrollable field - and that field has the parent window which also scrollable. Having to operate nested scrollbars to read every single response - which is the most frequent task you are performing - ruins the entire application.

I hadn't heard of Paw, but based on the screenshots and positive reviews in the comments, I'll be giving the trial a go. Fingers crossed!

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#88

Post by developer2 » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 5:46 AM UTC

doomtop wrote: post #16

matthewmacleod wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing for me was that it's a proper native app. It works really well, takes advantage of the native OS APIs and is a better product because of it.

Hypernap is a proper native app and less than a tenth the cost of Paw... http://gethypernap.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hypernap/id795069997

Hypernap may be a native app, but it's certainly not beautiful or fully featured. It uses the most basic interface elements thrown together in a messy soup. I have immense respect for people who manage to develop native apps, but when the interface looks like it was implemented as someone's very first experiment in XCode... well, there's a reason you don't pay much.

I don't understand why developers throw their arms in the air over pricing. Try out the app; if it has everything you will ever need out of such a tool and it greatly improves your productivity every single day... a one-time $50 payment is nothing. It's the cost of going out for dinner one evening.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#89

Post by harrychenca » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 6:09 AM UTC

If you already write specs for your API, you would seldom use a GUI to test API.

Re: Paw – Advanced API tool for Mac

#90

Post by polytap » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 6:13 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #54

I can't believe some of the comments in this thread. Paw is an advanced developer tool with serious functionality for testing APIs, and many of the most upvoted comments are basically just posting links to similar tools, with substantially less functionality, that are free. How many of these commenters make thousands of dollars every month as professional software engineers? How many make thousands each week? Paw is…

I couldn't upvote this enough. The lack of objective comparison in comments is astounding, and it fits a pattern.