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Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

wcfstorm.com

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Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#1

Post by namigop »

Hi HN,

In my spare time (evenings and weekends) I've built 3 products which have been relatively successful even with little advertising (only google ads budgeted at $30 per day). The latest one is WcfStorm.Rest; which is a REST service test client. I built it because I found that the current tools did not have the features I wanted such as, intellisense when working with HTTP headers, syntax highlighting for JSON messages, etc.

I'm continually trying to improve these products and would very much love get your feedback. Every suggestion is welcome!

(My apologies for any grammatical mistakes. English is not my first language)

Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time
wcfstorm.com

Re: Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#5

Post by namigop »

alpb wrote: post #3

I looked at the screenshots of that project, you said it has modern "Metro" user interface, and I believe http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/screenshots.aspx this has nothing to do with Metro UI patterns. What about this?

Oh those are screenshots for another product, WCFStorm (which is for WCF Testing). It's different from WCFStorm.Rest, the REST test client that is kind of metro - inspired. I have some screenshots here: http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/wcfstormrest-quickstart-guide.as...

You're right though. I should make that clear on that screenshots page.

Re: Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#7

Post by namigop »

alourenco wrote: post #6

I love WCFStorm! We have an enterprise license and I got most devs on the project I'm on to use it to test the webservices we're building. Now I'm working on using it to automate functional testing for our code.

Thanks!

If you have feedback on how to better improve WCFStorm, please do let me know.

Re: Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#8

Post by junto »

Just out of interest, what can WCFStorm do over the built-in wcftestclient?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx

The WCFStorm.Rest client is more interesting. At the moment I'm manually composing requests using Fiddler2 for localhost testing, or http://apigee.com for public facing services. A dedicated REST client sounds pretty cool.

One thing I'd purchase is an extension to WCF that builds a developers API documentation and test website around the WCF contracts: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7346522/auto-generate-an-...

ASP.NET WebAPI has an APIExplorer interface exposed to allow you build your own, but nothing out of the box: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-net...

One alternative is using the Chrome PostMan extension to craft REST requests and here is an example of the APIExplorer interface being used to expose PostMan PostCollections, which I thought was a great idea: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/06/15/using-a...

Re: Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#9

Post by namigop »

junto wrote: post #8

Just out of interest, what can WCFStorm do over the built-in wcftestclient? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx The WCFStorm.Rest client is more interesting. At the moment I'm manually composing requests using Fiddler2 for localhost testing, or http://apigee.com for public facing services. A dedicated REST client sounds pretty cool. One thing I'd purchase is an extension to WCF that builds a develop…

Thank you for the feedback and for the links. The one about building documentation around WCF contracts is very interesting.

Regarding WCFStorm, it has several features that are not in the built-in WCFTestClient such as (1) Save requests and responses and organize it into a "project", (2) Performance testing, (3) An object editor similar to WCFTestClient but with support for more types and others. http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more.aspx

Regarding WCFStorm.Rest, it does have similarities with POSTMan (and other clients). I'm not very familiar with POSTMan but the list of features for WCFSTorm.Rest is here http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more-rest.aspx

Re: Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time

#10

Post by junto »

namigop wrote: post #9
junto wrote: post #8

Just out of interest, what can WCFStorm do over the built-in wcftestclient? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx The WCFStorm.Rest client is more interesting. At the moment I'm manually composing requests using Fiddler2 for localhost testing, or http://apigee.com for public facing services. A dedicated REST client sounds pretty cool. One thing I'd purchase is an extension to WCF that builds a develop…

Thank you for the feedback and for the links. The one about building documentation around WCF contracts is very interesting. Regarding WCFStorm, it has several features that are not in the built-in WCFTestClient such as (1) Save requests and responses and organize it into a "project", (2) Performance testing, (3) An object editor similar to WCFTestClient but with support for more types and others. http://www.wcfstorm…

We have several clients for whom we are building APIs using WCF. We would buy a plug-and-play WCF extension that could provide a customisable developer's playground to test the API.

I will try your WCFStorm trial product when I pick up the next WCF development project.

Thanks for all the information.

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