Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services • Hacker News Board

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#101

Post by catshirt » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 12:57 PM UTC

snikch wrote: post #95

SixSigma wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that completely, citation needed.

I find your response to be really arrogant. Postman is an easily installed Chrome extension that can be supplied to everyone on your team, regardless of skill level. Requiring a cli isn't as easy as a one click install - there's dependencies (Python etc.) that are required which, while easy for many, aren't as simple for a lot of web developers - especially those who focus on front end development and may just need a…

you didn't answer the question.

> There are lots of things that you can do easily with postman but would be difficult with a CLI tool.

the jury is still out on this one. i'm not buying it now either. you've convinced me Postman is easier for non-technical people, but i'm not convinced it's more useful or easier than a command line.

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#102

Post by chandraonline » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 1:07 PM UTC

POSTman 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.

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#103

Post by Garbage » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 1:24 PM UTC

I 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.

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#104

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

catshirt wrote: post #101

snikch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your response to be really arrogant. Postman is an easily installed Chrome extension that can be supplied to everyone on your team, regardless of skill level. Requiring a cli isn't as easy as a one click install - there's dependencies (Python etc.) that are required which, while easy for many, aren't as simple for a lot of web developers - especially those who focus on front end development and may just need a…

you didn't answer the question. > There are lots of things that you can do easily with postman but would be difficult with a CLI tool. the jury is still out on this one. i'm not buying it now either. you've convinced me Postman is easier for non-technical people, but i'm not convinced it's more useful or easier than a command line.

[deleted]

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#105

Post by haswell » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #35

Also would take a look at SoapUI if you are dealing with multi step flows: http://www.soapui.org

I 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/oebpmncolm... any time I just need a quick request envelope for some WSDL.

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#106

Post by namigop » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:19 PM UTC

{ 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). 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-...)

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.

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#107

Post by dgesang » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:19 PM UTC

snikch wrote: post #95

SixSigma wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that completely, citation needed.

I find your response to be really arrogant. Postman is an easily installed Chrome extension that can be supplied to everyone on your team, regardless of skill level. Requiring a cli isn't as easy as a one click install - there's dependencies (Python etc.) that are required which, while easy for many, aren't as simple for a lot of web developers - especially those who focus on front end development and may just need a…

I can't use postman easily. I don't have a Google account. What do I do?

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#108

Post by skastel » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

hdra wrote: post #23

Would 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.

If you're looking for something with a lot of great features for in a web app that you can leave running in a tab check out our product: www.runscope.com It's great for recording http calls, editing and retrying and sharing. Plus we've got test suites and can import your Postaman collections to help get you started!

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#109

Post by SixSigma » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

andkon wrote: post #97

snikch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your response to be really arrogant. Postman is an easily installed Chrome extension that can be supplied to everyone on your team, regardless of skill level. Requiring a cli isn't as easy as a one click install - there's dependencies (Python etc.) that are required which, while easy for many, aren't as simple for a lot of web developers - especially those who focus on front end development and may just need a…

Totally agreed. Another benefit (or set of benefits): when you've got 5 CLI tabs open already, and you're trying to remember where your curl response went, it's nice to know Postman has (a) history of recent requests in a readily clickable list, (b) a different window that's easily accessible, and (c) any saved headers and tokens that I can otherwise never remember.

Like Tesla said "if you thought a bit more, you wouldn't have to sweat so much"

All of those would be eliminated with preparation and planning. And the results would be better quality than ad hoc poking with Bash

Re: Postman: a powerful HTTP client (for Chrome) to test web services

#110

Post by deevee » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 2:42 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #45

hdra wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but for me, most of the time it's more of a Cmd+Tab to Chrome from my iTerm or ST, and then Cmd+` several times to finally find it. And when you do it hundreds of times, it gets seriously tedious.

Yeah I know that feeling. Thankfully, virtual desktops + 3 monitors has fixed that for the most part, but that's not always usable in some circumstances. I only posted that, as I only found out about it a month ago myself The other thing I've done (with Zed in particular) is put the icon for the packaged app into my dock, so I can get to it quickly from anywhere. Of course, this becomes unwieldy if you have a lot of…

Zed is also packaged as a standalone app now.