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Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

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Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#41

Post by theptip »

mosselman wrote: post #22

I have a Paw license and recently I started using Insomnia instead: https://insomnia.rest/ I find Paw's project management very annoying. It assumes that I am working on some project and wants me to organise everything like that. Fine, lets do it, so where are my projects? They are hidden in some dropdown that you can have fun finding. Insomnia is much cleaner and more to the point.

Insomnia looks nice, but by default it does not format URLs as links, so in a HATEOAS API you can't follow links.

Am I just missing a setting here? Seems like this is a fairly big omission, Postman even supports copying over your headers (e.g. auth token) when you follow a link.

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#42

Post by InTheArena »

chrissnell wrote: post #13
InTheArena wrote: post #5

$50? Ouch. I support developers making a living, but this is a market with a lot of competition, some of it free, some of it great, and some of it free and great. If it were $19, the professional looking UI would have had me pull the trigger, but $50 is way on the other side of of my price sensitivity.

I don't use Paw (I'm a Linux-on-the-desktop user) and I have no idea who they are but a one-time $50 cost doesn't bother me if it's something that is a key tool for my job and is demonstrably better than its competitors in the market. In other words, if it's good enough for me to spend $20 on a license, it's good enough for me to spend $50.

True, but does this do things better then postman? What's my migration cost? For that matter, why not just use curl?

There is of course, value, but there $50 price point I reserve for things absolutely critical, with little good competition - for Example Tower, or OmniFocus.

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#43

Post by cwp »

dep_b wrote: post #36

People pass me paw files like I'm supposed to have it installed. I don't understand it. "Here's the documentation of the API". OK thanks.

Yeah, I hate that. I keep getting files that have a ".docx" extension and I have no idea what to do with them. And the designers are using some program that uses ".ps". Thanks guys.

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#44

Post by thejosh »

mcescalante wrote: post #26
mosselman wrote: post #22

I have a Paw license and recently I started using Insomnia instead: https://insomnia.rest/ I find Paw's project management very annoying. It assumes that I am working on some project and wants me to organise everything like that. Fine, lets do it, so where are my projects? They are hidden in some dropdown that you can have fun finding. Insomnia is much cleaner and more to the point.

Other reasons that I also like Insomnia (I've used Paw as well): - Cross platform - Simpler use for non-experts - No need for pro (paid subscription) for my needs, so it's completely free - Feels nicer than all of the browser "REST explorer" plugins

Haven't used paw, but agreed with above about Insomnia, and:

- GraphQL support is pretty decent

- Copy as CURL is awesome

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#45

Post by dsgfhasgjklas »

mosselman wrote: post #22

I have a Paw license and recently I started using Insomnia instead: https://insomnia.rest/ I find Paw's project management very annoying. It assumes that I am working on some project and wants me to organise everything like that. Fine, lets do it, so where are my projects? They are hidden in some dropdown that you can have fun finding. Insomnia is much cleaner and more to the point.

What differentiates Insomnia from Postman? Both are non-native electron apps.

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#46

Post by jozi9 »

_pdp_ wrote: post #38

I will use the opportunity to mention our own tool: https://rest.secapps.com/ - some of you may find it useful It has vars and rich text editing like Paw, i.e. you can build complex transforms by nesting what we call text items. Here is a blog post how this is done in practice: https://blog.websecurify.com/2017/02/hacking-node-serialize.... We are still working on the UX but there are a lot of cool features in the pi…

Also, if you want make test API calls as part of your CI process (or just want to monitor them regularly), I created my own tool: http://www.apilope.com. I always missed such features from REST API tools!

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#47

Post by gschier »

theptip wrote: post #41
mosselman wrote: post #22

I have a Paw license and recently I started using Insomnia instead: https://insomnia.rest/ I find Paw's project management very annoying. It assumes that I am working on some project and wants me to organise everything like that. Fine, lets do it, so where are my projects? They are hidden in some dropdown that you can have fun finding. Insomnia is much cleaner and more to the point.

Insomnia looks nice, but by default it does not format URLs as links, so in a HATEOAS API you can't follow links. Am I just missing a setting here? Seems like this is a fairly big omission, Postman even supports copying over your headers (e.g. auth token) when you follow a link.

Insomnia founder here. It now does format links but it opens them in your default browser instead of making a new request. That's definitely on the to-do list.

Also, if you want it sooner, Insomnia is open source so it's possible to help grow the project. I think the only other app that's open source is Advanced REST Client but it's still a Chrome app (I think).

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#48

Post by taude »

I'm not sure why I'd use this over Postman, which is platform independent. I know some people are offended by the wrapped web-ish UI, but most of the devs on my team don't even know what an Electron app is and they use Postman everyday. And with Postman, we can run it on Windows, OS X, and Linux. And then there's the team collaboration and scripting it...

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#49

Post by gschier »

dsgfhasgjklas wrote: post #45
mosselman wrote: post #22

I have a Paw license and recently I started using Insomnia instead: https://insomnia.rest/ I find Paw's project management very annoying. It assumes that I am working on some project and wants me to organise everything like that. Fine, lets do it, so where are my projects? They are hidden in some dropdown that you can have fun finding. Insomnia is much cleaner and more to the point.

What differentiates Insomnia from Postman? Both are non-native electron apps.

There are so many differences it's impossible to list them. In general, Postman focuses on having every feature under the sun (integration testing, mock APIs, etc) whereas Insomnia focuses on the core of just being an HTTP client with additional helpers to be more productive. The result being that Insomnia is not suitable for as many use cases but is has a better user experience because it's more focused. Insomnia is also open source software.

You should really try them both to figure out which one best suites you.

P.S. I'm the developer of Insomnia.

Re: Paw – macOS HTTP client for testing and describing APIs

#50

Post by gschier »

thejosh wrote: post #44
mcescalante wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other reasons that I also like Insomnia (I've used Paw as well): - Cross platform - Simpler use for non-experts - No need for pro (paid subscription) for my needs, so it's completely free - Feels nicer than all of the browser "REST explorer" plugins

Haven't used paw, but agreed with above about Insomnia, and: - GraphQL support is pretty decent - Copy as CURL is awesome

Don't forget the ability to paste a curl command into the url to import it!
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