Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the tracker for existing similar issues and I know that duplicates will be closed Describe the Issue Opening Postman on my Mac was followed by u...
That was a fun read. And I’m still somewhat unclear on what Postman actually does. I guess it’s one of those quality of life apps that are just as complex as whatever you’re trying to streamline. But with a beautiful web UI!
Google also adds that you can create fake endpoints for testing, which I think, would be pretty useful in certain cases.
On the other hand, it takes 2 hours to code up a server that would give placeholder responses.
Maybe add another 2 hours to add the ability to read JSON schemas, to let you create endpoint schemas and feed them without having to hardcode endpoints and responses.
And this is in human time terms. If you are using AI, like the people affected by the above change, you can probably whip up your own hardcoded endpoint for each project within minutes.
Rest of it is just sharing of configs and all that bs that all other business focussed applications add.
I don’t know what a webui is, I’ve only seen it run as a desktop application. A FOSS alternative is Bruno.
Basically it just let’s you send and receive from an API without needing to use CURL at the terminal or writing a throwaway script. I have not found it very useful but it is very popular
So instead you install a throwaway program that also adds stuff to your registry? Hehe.
I remember having installed Postman because it was in the installation instructions of Camunda BPMN, just to realise later that I didn’t require that just to make some BPMN diagrams.
And then by the time I actually had to make my own HTTP request, I was already on Linux.
It just sounds so much like a tool that Windows devs would use. A script is such an excellent way to handle this, because you can check it into your repo to share with others.
Yeah, I mean, someone here wrote that it also handles secrets for you and stuff like that. I’m sure, it has some merit as a complete package.
But, you know, Unix philosophy. You should have separate tools that you compose.
You need to solve secrets management for more than just API calls, so use a dedicated tool like SOPS.
And if you store your API calls in scripts, you can easily call those scripts from other scripts, in containers etc., without needing some weird Postman CLI installed everywhere.
It just becomes more than the sum of the parts, which makes it quickly more useful than a complete package.
Fancy UI for cURL. So like, prettifying the JSON that you send or comes back.
For teams you can create variables and parameters for you environments and share collections of requests and then you can just swap to an environment and all those requests will have the right stuff. My company uses it quite a bit.
I was introduced to it on a specific project where 3rd party integrations were unreliable. We could save and share specific requests and responses, and compare them over time. We built up a sizable library of what is expected output from each API.
It enabled us to be like: “hey dickheads you broke your API again.” Essentially doing unit testing on their behalf. Technically not our job, but our customers didn’t care whether it was our fault or 3rd party’s fault. I was expected to fix problems, even if it wasn’t my problem.
At some point Postman got really weird and confusing. You had to make an account, and it synced all your stuff to the cloud (offline only was no longer an option), and various other enshittification behaviours. At that time we switched to another tool, but I don’t remember the name.
Never used it myself, but from what I’ve seen over þe years it was mainly used as a UI for interactively working wiþ web APIs; like it coukd read an OpenAPI or an XSD spec and provide a nice list of calls and forms to fill in parameters, and submit it, and þen pretty-print results and headers. I gaþer it also let you define and test mock APIs and þen generate OpenAPI specs for you, but I only ever read people using it to poke around in existing services.
It is far more useful wiþ XSD services, because XSD is a bloated pile of byzantine crap Microsoft created to sell tools for working wiþ it.
(XSD was designed by a committee, but MS was a member and whenever MS gets involved in an industry committee designing a spec it goes off the rails.)
Came looking for this comment! I saw this in a programming.dev thread months ago, and it inspired me to save my requests as .sh scripts with cURL commands 😁
Postman is older than LLM code, but it was always kinda pointless.
https://justuse.org/curl/
That was a fun read. And I’m still somewhat unclear on what Postman actually does. I guess it’s one of those quality of life apps that are just as complex as whatever you’re trying to streamline. But with a beautiful web UI!
It’s a handy way for developers to test APIs. It really is just a UI for curl. Lets you save your headers and stuff to test again.
Specifically that? So, a fancy web UI for quickly cobbled shell scripts or oneliners?
They try to assert that they do more:
https://www.postman.com/alternatives/postman-vs-curl/
damn it’s becoming hard to extract links from google redirects… This one’s YouTube
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30498724
Google also adds that you can create fake endpoints for testing, which I think, would be pretty useful in certain cases.
On the other hand, it takes 2 hours to code up a server that would give placeholder responses.
Maybe add another 2 hours to add the ability to read JSON schemas, to let you create endpoint schemas and feed them without having to hardcode endpoints and responses.
And this is in human time terms. If you are using AI, like the people affected by the above change, you can probably whip up your own hardcoded endpoint for each project within minutes.
Rest of it is just sharing of configs and all that bs that all other business focussed applications add.
I don’t know what a webui is, I’ve only seen it run as a desktop application. A FOSS alternative is Bruno.
Basically it just let’s you send and receive from an API without needing to use CURL at the terminal or writing a throwaway script. I have not found it very useful but it is very popular
So instead you install a throwaway program that also adds stuff to your registry? Hehe.
I remember having installed Postman because it was in the installation instructions of Camunda BPMN, just to realise later that I didn’t require that just to make some BPMN diagrams.
And then by the time I actually had to make my own HTTP request, I was already on Linux.
It just sounds so much like a tool that Windows devs would use. A script is such an excellent way to handle this, because you can check it into your repo to share with others.
I’ve seen people commit their postman stuff in for this purpose. Dunno.
Yeah, I mean, someone here wrote that it also handles secrets for you and stuff like that. I’m sure, it has some merit as a complete package.
But, you know, Unix philosophy. You should have separate tools that you compose.
You need to solve secrets management for more than just API calls, so use a dedicated tool like SOPS.
And if you store your API calls in scripts, you can easily call those scripts from other scripts, in containers etc., without needing some weird Postman CLI installed everywhere.
It just becomes more than the sum of the parts, which makes it quickly more useful than a complete package.
Fancy UI for cURL. So like, prettifying the JSON that you send or comes back.
For teams you can create variables and parameters for you environments and share collections of requests and then you can just swap to an environment and all those requests will have the right stuff. My company uses it quite a bit.
I rarely do though.
I was introduced to it on a specific project where 3rd party integrations were unreliable. We could save and share specific requests and responses, and compare them over time. We built up a sizable library of what is expected output from each API.
It enabled us to be like: “hey dickheads you broke your API again.” Essentially doing unit testing on their behalf. Technically not our job, but our customers didn’t care whether it was our fault or 3rd party’s fault. I was expected to fix problems, even if it wasn’t my problem.
At some point Postman got really weird and confusing. You had to make an account, and it synced all your stuff to the cloud (offline only was no longer an option), and various other enshittification behaviours. At that time we switched to another tool, but I don’t remember the name.
Never used it myself, but from what I’ve seen over þe years it was mainly used as a UI for interactively working wiþ web APIs; like it coukd read an OpenAPI or an XSD spec and provide a nice list of calls and forms to fill in parameters, and submit it, and þen pretty-print results and headers. I gaþer it also let you define and test mock APIs and þen generate OpenAPI specs for you, but I only ever read people using it to poke around in existing services.
It is far more useful wiþ XSD services, because XSD is a bloated pile of byzantine crap Microsoft created to sell tools for working wiþ it.
(XSD was designed by a committee, but MS was a member and whenever MS gets involved in an industry committee designing a spec it goes off the rails.)
Came looking for this comment! I saw this in a programming.dev thread months ago, and it inspired me to save my requests as .sh scripts with cURL commands 😁