ProgrammerHumor
postmanNightmaresNeverEnd
Discussion
We don't talk about Bruno
Joke aside: Bruno is a good free replacement for Postman.
I used to love insomnia, they ruined themselves so badly it's not even funny. Outside of just running an old version of it, I have no real alternative that I actually like.
As Insomnia's original creator I felt this pain too, so started building https://yaak.app
I think you'll like it.
oh SNAP!
can you give (or perhaps there already is) a summary of the delta/differences between yaak and insomnia?
edit: also, you should do an AMAb (ask me about) focused on api clients.
Perhaps I should write a post about this. I have a comparison to Postman which probably does the same job https://yaak.app/blog/postman-alternative
yaak
Yet Another API... Klient?
Sorry, just whenever I see "ya" in a name it triggers my "yet another compiler-compiler" memories 😂
Haha definitely. I tried to come up with a backronym but no luck either
What's wrong with insomnia? Used to use it few months ago, did the job well, and definitely better than recent postman.
Always online requirements. It used to work perfectly fine offline, now you have to log in and upload all your stuff to their cloud. There is an offline scratchpad, but that's about it. I shouldn't have to share my stuff to send API requests to localhost LOL.
That's cool! Didn't know it. Thanks for sharing!
It's not based on shitty web-tech but a proper desktop app.
Also I don't see any "pricing" link on their website. That's a good sign. It looks like true OpenSource at first glance.
Need to try it out.
It's great, especially since everything is a plugin, and you can even write plugins to extend existing plugins too.
This means it's not strictly HTTP only but it will do other protocols as long as a plugin exists (a few DB plugins are there already)
CURL forever!
thanks I'm in the middle of testing some APIs and I just downloaded Bruno
My experience of this was so many bugs and frustrations, gave up with it
i tried to install on linux mint couple of days ago, its not working. i think some tauri webkit issue
Never heard of this, but I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks.
Postman used to be great, then they started monetizing it and now every update makes it worse.
We actually switched from pm to Bruno completely the last quarter. Best decision. Even the free version is soo much better then postman (for our use case at least) and the migrating tools given by bruno work awesome
What about HTTPie?
Just the next company which didn't reach the enshittification phase yet…
Also this here reads scary: https://www.usebruno.com/privacy-policy
Besides that it looks very shady. You can't find anything about this "Bruno Software Inc.".
Just use proper OpenSource. Real OpenSource does not need some "privacy policy".
It’s as open source as it gets and is under the MIT license. They are incredibly transparent: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/269
It can be easily forked if they deviated from their original mission.
From that discussion:
So here is what we dont want to do
- We don't want to raise VC funding
- We don't want to sell the project (get acquired)
- We don't want to add/support cloud sync
-
We don't want to start a company and hire people(edit: see here)- We don't want to sell monthly recurring subscriptions [[but]]
They lied already about two of these points!
How naive are people to believe they don't lie about the rest?
It's always the same playbook.
They are incredibly transparent
Could you link me to the responsible company registry, so I can validate their financial claims?
Bruno is licensed under the MIT License. This means that anyone can fork the project, modify it, and distribute their own version. So, even if the current maintainers deviate from their stated goals, the community can always step in to preserve the project's integrity under different leadership.
The entire privacy policy (which looks like copy+paste boiler plate) seems to apply to the actual usebruno.com website and its fields/forms, not really the desktop client itself.
They say:
This Privacy Policy ('Privacy Policy') describes how Bruno Software, Inc. ('Bruno', 'we', 'us', or 'our') may collect, use, store, disclose, process, and transfer your personal information […]
I don't see anything that would support the claim that this would only apply to the website. It unequivocal states it's about the whole of "Bruno Software, Inc."
Anyone that can store settings/telemetry on their own cloud should have a privacy policy.
Yes exactly!
That's what we moved to.
Damn I started using Insomnia year ago, this looks really nice though, might have to switch
We are also moving over to bruno now as a company.
There is no way to install Postman on Windows 11 without leaking internal data (according to our security department). Plus it is kinda expensive, most people here will not even need a Bruno license.
Looks interesting. I might dump postman then
I came here to say this. Bruno is the future
Httpie
Curl
Can you make a curl post request passing JWT auth, 2 custom headers to an HTTPS URL without looking stuff up?
Yes, you can use curl for that. In fact, Postman also uses Curl. It's just inconvenient, like coding in simple text editors.
Just put your secrets into chat gpt and let it format the curl command for you!
Making requests using curl is like writing code using notepad, so perfect basically
My multi-national company had a whole transition period to switch from Postman to Bruno.
We are in the middle of it.
Glad you like it! (I'm the creator)
Let me know if it could be even better
Postman is a piece of shit. Especially if you need to test your WebSocket requests. I had to write my own software instead of using this freezing crap.
My employer got rid of the software entirely. IT doesn't allow use of Postman.
Given the pay-per-seat and all the privacy/security issues, I am even surprised it's not being ditched *much* more often.
Postman was one of its kind in the past so a lot of the features are hard to migrate.
That's why more people aren't switching. No one has time to migrate everything to another software which may eventually enshittfy itself in next 2 years.
another software which may eventually enshittfy itself in next 2 years
This can be easily prevented: Just use proper OpenSource!
A good indicator for proper OpenSource is the license. If it's GPLv3, of even better AGPLv3, you're usually safe.
Still waiting for the day people finally get that.
Is this because GPL requires any derivative works to be licensed under GPL as well, meaning the author can't later remove the license and try to make a proprietary version?
I think it's more something about showing intend and stance.
Using GPLv3 is making a statement that you really believe in FOSS values.
You can still proprietase some GPL software in case you're the sole copyright holder. (As with any other license in that case.)
But using GPL usually shows that you don't plan any such nefarious things. It makes it harder (if not impossible in case of AGPLv3) to hold back features behind closed doors.
I've never seen a GPLv3 project go rouge. But with other OpenSource licenses it's often just a matter of time.
The other point is: Big Tech doesn't touch GPLv3 code, not even with a nine foot pole. So when using software under this license(s) you're pretty safe from this angle. It's almost certain such a project won't end up in the belly of the usual suspects at some point.
But if all contributors has SLA signed they can change license (old version stay but without updates).
Sure. That's why I talked about "indicator" and "usually".
But I think GPL also expressed some attitude. It's seldom people using this license betray the idea of free software.
Many big companies don't like that either, because you often cannot buy support and they can be abandoned and you still need to migrate.
I like Insomnia. Being able to just copy paste a curl into the address bar is very helpful.
Insomnia has been banned in my org for similar reasons to Postman's storing of credentials online
Bruno is probably the best replacement
Been using it for years, it’s really good
Yeah insomnia's been my go-to replacement since I got tired of doing the web inspector trick to reenable postman's local scratchpad mode
postman already did this years a ago bro
I tried it but they managed to mess it up by making me go though an import menu.
Edit: I guess they fixed it again by now, just tried it out of curiosity 😊
I started working on https://yaak.app after seeing my previous creation (Insomnia) go down the same path.
How did insomnia enshittify, from your perspective? I'm assuming you owned it.
I sold it in 2019. I think they saw an opportunity for more profit and took it, not realizing why people loved Insomnia in the first place.
Sad to see that happen; at least you got a payout 😁
Just keep creating, and selling and creating and selling and you'll be a billionair in no time
Thanks for the encouragement!
At some point you just gotta learn to use curl
Wait till he finds out almost everything is a wrapper over curl
No. At least half the things are wrappers over ffmpeg/imagemagick.
I wouldn't even be surprised if ffmpeg could make http requests
You can watch youtube on headless servers using ffmpeg. You have to cheat by using youtube-dl for the request but its a nice fun fact. I used it to watch youtube in train without launching desktop enviroment not to waste battery.
How? Are you watching it rendered to the console? Or is ffmpeg somehow able to render directly to the screen without a wm?
Ffmpeg renders directly without wm.
Huh, even mpv works. You learn something new every day
Which are just wrappers over curl
That's the worst take on here. Yeah sure, manually add 5 attachments and a bearer token, + the content type header and 5 query parameters, I am sure it it will work great
Yeah "just use curl" is not a serious suggestion for people who do frequent backend work at an enterprise level. These tools keep you better organized because you aren't saving all your queries in a text file to edit before copy/paste them in your terminal. And especially in a group setting, importing and export a bunch of queries and environment variables at once for coworkers saves you a ton of needless wheel spinning.
Not to mention the convenience of editing/reading through pre-beautified request and response bodies so I don't need to shove them into another tool just to read and edit a 50 line JSON blob. Also explicitly named environment variables so I don't have to magically know what each of my 5 query parameters are supposed to be before looking at the docs. The list goes on.
I fully agree with everything said.
But there are in fact people who think that just using a terminal emulator for everything, running some Vim, or so, is in fact productive working.
The sad thing is: It's impossible to argue with this people. They are beyond all reason. You will get beaten up really hard if you say that a terminal / vim workflow is incredibly inefficient compared to proper tools.
What makes using vim inefficient? Using terminal tools just to use terminal tools is dumb, but vim is very powerful and lacks nothing in the context of text editing.
the thing about using terminal tools is you don't have to relearn workflows every time you want to do a marginally different task
On the other hand, if your API doesn't require complicated tokens (for example, if it's supposed to be accessible to everyone on the local network), curl works just fine and you don't need the complexity of a dedicated API software.
"the complexity of a dedicated API software"
brew install --cask postman
???
Who needs a GUI when you can write the curl command directly ? Or make yourself a bash alias for easy one liners ?
I manually write me a POST curl that takes multipart data, one part is an array of files, second part is 1 file, and third part is a text field that takes a JSON. Make sure to include the correct headers, and make sure it accepts an octet stream as a return. Also, the endpoint has 2 query parameters, and one path parameter.
OH, and by the way, you can't type it in a text editor and copy it, because as you said, writing it manually is easy. Write it strictly within the terminal. Good luck
Sure, but all the APIs I work on require complicated tokens.
Why would you do that? You make a shell script. Obviously using unix tools is harder at first but you learn how to use them and you don't have to worry about every program reimplementing text editing features. You just find the data processing tools that work for you and pipe them to some other thing that has one job
Some of us do this for a living and know what we're talking about bud, these tools exist because a lot of us use functionality beyond changing the request body of a POST
You are literally just describing changing post messages though
It's a barometer for people who are doing things as hobbies are home vs who's actually working at a real place. Curl works for basic hello world APIs, but good luck getting it to work with any sort of custom auth stack.
This is the way
Nah, never, nada, nope, not gonna happen, nooooo!!!!
I'm using REST Client in VSCode - simplicity of HTTP files is great for keeping and sharing API examples, or just automating some API usages
Best way to send simple requests IMO. Also helps that my coworkers look at me like some kind of wizard when I use this lmao
I like HTTPYac which is v similar to that one, but allows more scripting
Yeah, I also like it very much for simpler use cases. It's really one of the greater VSC extensions.
I use the thunderclient addon in vscode. Maybe I'll check this one out too
Plot twist: your localhost is hosted somewhere in Ohio.
It is if you live in ohio
Lol wait until your firm realize that postman license isn't free at all...
Free For individuals or a small team of 3 or less to start testing APIs.
Then it's $15 per user per month
+1 for Hoppscotch for being able to self-host and being fairly similar to Postman so the transition isn't too annoying
Time to learn curl
yeah... got you... you just have to script all the consecutive calls and extractions from the responses yourself but don't you worry the http calls I do for you xD
Wait until you learn that once we had WSDL files and you could literally generate code for all interactions with API until some people thought they don’t like XML and reinventing RPC via HTTP is easier.
I'm old enough ;) [edit] you forgot to mention that they also thought that json would be a better format than xml... because they just don't understand xml
But it has curly brackets!
ok fair
Please convince me that xml is a good fit for data transfer. a format that was designed as a document markup language. I still have nightmares about SOAP and WSDL that never worked just right and need to understand why anyone would prefer that over json.
Bruno is the most 1:1 postman replacement that I've found so far.
Use curl
Or a trivial 5 line Go/Java/Python/Rust application, too many people are incapable of even performing trivial HTTP requests.
Yeah sure, manually add 5 attachments and a bearer token, + the content type header and 5 query parameters, I am sure it it will work great
I use Kulala in neovim, works great. You can also put your .http files containing the requests in git.
I've been using insomnia instead of postman for ages now, much happier for it
Sir, do you curl?
Yeah sure, manually add 5 attachments and a bearer token, + the content type header and 5 query parameters, I am sure it it will work great
PM: Why aren't you finished yet?
We're living in a post postman society, man. It's time to move on, that trash has been saasified beyond recognition
I remember when I got my new work laptop, and went to install Postman again and was like "what? I just want a local application and be done"
trying to make a saas product for a curl wrapper is crazy
curl + txt + git
some python script if I am feeling too fancy
So this post is basically an ad?
I mean, in my defense:
1) Wasn't the first one to write an alternative,
2) We got over half a dozen other alternatives listed in the comment section, and
3) You'll generally find me speaking highly about yaak, bruno, hurl, httpie, etc., compared to the one I made a meme about :)
Cool, just remember that shelf promotion has pretty much always been frowned upon on reddit, and the TOS clearly requires that you disclose it's your product.
makes api management and testing easy.
Where's the source code?!
In the current state it's simply a complete no-go.
And that the didn't purplish the sources right from the start is a BIG red flag!
Why was I not aware of this until now!!
Still early days :)
Going OSS targeted for EOY. By then, it should cover all the bases.
I miss Paw
Bruno baybeeeee
le proprietary curl has arrived
Yeah sure, manually add 5 attachments and a bearer token, + the content type header and 5 query parameters, I am sure it it will work great
Go bruno
Yay! Another Bruno user!
Literally just use curl. You don't need a wrapper around it with telemetry.
Many tech companies are banning postman now for security reasons due to this.
never understands the logo, not the 1st time I knew this software, not 5 years later... just saying...
If I’m keeping it simple why would I bother with postman
Don’t even use it for years now, but the answer to your question is people are slaves to their habits.
But yeah, for something this trivial, curl will work. For api docs, scripting, etc. there are still better contenders than 📩man
There is also AI integration now. FFS.
Htitp
I just use Resting plugin.
It was during this moment that I just concluded that the internet is a software developer's instinctive need. I discovered Insomnia later though.
After fiddling with Bruno, HTTPie and Hoppscotch(all OSS) Hoppscotch seemed best for me as I had a use case for websockets which HS offered most cleanly (though only text data can be sent)
swagger if you are already using openapi spec
ThunderClient?
Yaak is nice, the built in one from JetBrains too
Insomnium
Currently using scalar. Seems to work fine and you can just download a whole api description and tell it to eat it
I've been using the REST client that comes with PhpStorm. I imagine it's bundled in many of JetBrains' products.
BRUNO FTW
Personally, I like to make a new project and just put my requests there. Using fetch directly gives you all the features that Postman ever could and more and better.
I had that problem half an hour ago
go Bruno
I work with an old version to avoid this
I really like Scalar. So much better.
guys at work updated the postman version also on our restricted machines (no internet access) without testing that. AAAAAAHHHHHH
Also If you want to save your requests you need to store all your Client Secrets in our cloud
"curl -i" Ahh moment
Yeah sure, manually add 5 attachments and a bearer token, + the content type header and 5 query parameters, I am sure it it will work great
What about swagger? Am I missing something as I don't see anyone else suggesting it?
Isn't Swagger is for documentation, not testing?
you can, check fastapi swagger doc page
Right, so fastapi provides an open-api compatible endpoint for documentation. It's a good resource for visualising what you'll need to test, but that documentation endpoint won't execute requests for you with assertions like Postman does
it lets you execute requests. (there is button right near each endpoint and when you click you can enter values and click on send).
Idk about assertions tho
It's capabilities are very rudimentary, compared to "real" API testing tools.
Yeah, it's good, you can copy curl command from its page with all the params filled
Does anything else have something to work with mcp?
Imagine not knowing curl
I've never forgiven these pricks for changing the license terms and requiring much more expensive licenses for the use of... Running collections on our own machines.
They're a shit unethical company, with a shit bloated product. Plenty of better options out there.
The price of Postman is comparable to that of IntelliJ. Now consider the difference in difficulty of developing such software
More expensive per head for enterprise users than intellij. It's insanity at its finest. At the same time, the free version is allowed for corporate use, but it forces companies to trust postman's servers with their internal api details.
Even more over, IntelliJ now provides an HTTP testing client as an extension, so you could do postman stuff in IntelliJ lol
Technically, it can replace Postman/Insomnia.
But tbf, IntelliJ's HTTP client uses code/text (DSL) based files for specifying the actions and tests.
It's great for devs, because the collections are now Git/review friendly and can live inside my project. That was always one of my biggest pet-peeves with Postman/Insomnia, even before they fucked with the license.
But I see non-dev team members struggle with this format. The more graphical UI of Postman/Insomnia enabled these team members to help with API testing. That has completely gone with IntelliJ's http client and now falls purely on our devs.
To be honest, you can use their cl client with plain json, which can be "vsed" too.
.http files are so much nicer and supported in VS Code and all Jetbrains IDEs. In your case I understand, but if you don't have non-devs testing there's really not much reason to use Postman anymore imho.
isn't postman free?
Not really. If you want to share and synchronize your collections, which is the most basic feature, you gotta pay. One may think that it's not so crucial, but if you work in a company it actually is. APIs change frequently and you want all your teammates to be up to date
As someone who tried to get the head of qa to green light an api test suit, these being one of the reasons (the other being reducing a 2 ish hour automation to aboit 1 minute), to be told a user wouldn't look at the response, so no. I feel the last part of this comment a bit to much. tried to fix people shit when they break it, as we all have slight differences.
Postman 10 years ago was such an amazing product. It's so awful these days and was ruined by VC firms trying to extract value
Too many products have gone that way. Sounds like EagleCAD, where AutoDesk bought it and people said it's gone down hill (and they are killing it off next year, which, since it requires logins and all that, probably won't work, and I don't see what they want to replace it with)
I vaguely recall the OG dev talking about it here on Reddit when it was just a humble Chrome extension. Then it exploded and has enshittified rapidly.
Enshittified, gotta remember this term.
Enshittification - Wikipedia
So use one of the thousands of equivalent competitors. I use Thunder Client in VS Code. It's free and does everything thing that Postman does, except it's free.
Price? I've been using it free for years. Did this license model just recently change?
EDIT: haven't used it in awhile, now has me wanting to sign in and going "we hit a snag" (and if I choose to use the desktop app, I think a lot of my REST calls are missing)
You'll be fine for trivial use cases of sending a few ad hoc requests here and there.
If you want to build up a few requests with some test scripts and run the entire collection, they went from letting you do that an unlimited amount of times to needing to be on the top level enterprise level. You can do it on lower levels but the cap is so low, it may as well not exist. They basically saw they had loads of people tied in to the mid level subscription, and gutted its functionality to force people to pay more than double per seat in order to do things that used to be possible for free.
My organisation had built a lot of our API automation around this tool, and this change was enough for me to be able to justify refusing to upgrade the license and kick off a project to replace it all with .net code. Sending our rep a cancellation email criticising them for being greedy and unreliable was incredibly satisfying.
Ahh yeah that would do it. I use it simply to test REST calls, ensure the structure is right, and then get back results (all for API work in a C# application usually)
Hopefull the StopKillingGames initiative in the EU will start a talk about digital licenses which may have repercussions outside just the gaming industry. The initiative is just to get the conversation started.
If you or anyone you know lives in the EU, please sign the petition (it's an official one so false signatures will get removed and forwarded to interpol, they probably won't prosecute tho)