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

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

#121

Post by thechut »

SixSigma wrote: post #116
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…

I know that there is nothing that an add-in can do that a scripting environment can't and it is not a that difficult, which is the assertion I am responding to. Sooner or later the dialog box driven tool will prevent you from doing what you want. I would still like an example of a series of Http:// requests that is "difficult" to do with just curl, wget and a bit of shell script.

Curl is my go to tool for this sort of interaction. I have been a long time Postman user though. The number one feature it has which curl doesn't is collections. Which is basically their name for saving queries. I have my companies entire API saved in various collections which allows me to quickly do any API call without looking at documentation or having to whip up so JSON boilerplate.

For more advanced or one off testing, curl would still be my go to.

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

#123

Post by Dobbs »

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.

Slightly off topic but look into witch (http://manytricks.com/witch/) for better OSX window switching. I have alt+tab configured to switch between windows on the current desktop that aren't hidden.

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

#124

Post by i39d »

SimonW43 wrote: post #70
forlorn wrote: post #64

> for Chrome Thank you but no.

While 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.

Chrome 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.

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

#125

Post by nitrogen »

thechut wrote: post #121
SixSigma wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that there is nothing that an add-in can do that a scripting environment can't and it is not a that difficult, which is the assertion I am responding to. Sooner or later the dialog box driven tool will prevent you from doing what you want. I would still like an example of a series of Http:// requests that is "difficult" to do with just curl, wget and a bit of shell script.

Curl is my go to tool for this sort of interaction. I have been a long time Postman user though. The number one feature it has which curl doesn't is collections. Which is basically their name for saving queries. I have my companies entire API saved in various collections which allows me to quickly do any API call without looking at documentation or having to whip up so JSON boilerplate. For more advanced or one off t…

I have a "collection" of curl command lines aliased in my ~/.bash_aliases file. Maybe something like that would help you?

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

#126

Post by mlni »

abritishguy wrote: post #77
stock_toaster wrote: post #16

I prefer cli tools for api driving/testing, and httpie[1] works pretty well for that. [1]: https://github.com/jkbr/httpie

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

Chrome dev tools make testing RESTful backends with curl very easy: right-click on a request in network panel and choose "Copy as curl". Priceless little gem.

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

#127

Post by cl8ton »

Postman 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.

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