I was just working on a POST API at work. You POST some data to a URL endpoint, you expect a response. Buckle up, that’s the job sometimes. Happy path responses, error responses, handling incomplete or bad data, etc.
You can just rawdog a web browser for this kind of work, building some kind of repeatable way to do the POST then using the Network tab in DevTools to see what you’re sending and getting.
But there better tools. I typically think of Postman for this, and I’m sure it’s a very nice app. But it can also feel like a bit much, with a homepage full of AI talk and enterprise plans and whatnot. I mention this because I serendipitously happen to run across two new-to-me tools that seemed to fit the bill for my work:
- Hoppscotch — Browser Based & Open Source
- Yaak — Native App(s) & Open Source
I tend to prefer browser-based tools, but I went with Yaak just because then it would “just work” with my local dev environment without a proxy or anything.
I’d like to mention Bruno ( https://www.usebruno.com/ ) here in case folks want to give it a spin — I have been using it quite extensively since Insomnia went cloud’n’all. Simple for simple use cases but pretty powerful when you need it (environments, post/pre scripts, tests etc). Stores everything in the filesystem so it’s easy to sync with git.
(Need to check out yaak though…)
The Hoppscotch GitHub description mentions https://insomnia.rest/ so that’s on the list too I suppose.