I used Postman for years, but over the last few years have been loving the Insomnia client and wanted to share some of the cool things you can do with it!
Good timing. Now that Postman has decided to deprecate scratchpad (effectively making it only usable with their cloud, which they desperately tried to sell since years) alternative products is the only way to go. I feel like I liked Postman since it was really the first reasonable lightweight REST client. Then it was mostly the power of habit. I guess it is a time to review those habbits.
I gave up on Insomnia at first because I couldnt work out how to import CURL - then a month later all I found I had to do is just copy and paste it into the URL....goodbye Postman!
Inspired a lot from Insomnia, so I have written my own API client named Thor Client. It was challenging at first, but it has been really motivating, like building my own dream tool. You can also paste cURL to the input of request URL to import immediately!
Hi Zach, thanks for the video. WIll you be making a longer video with a proper flow in which we pass on the token(after a succcesful logon) , and then making sure this token remains active during the User's total session etc.? e.g. If you're trying to log in to your bank app, and once successul login is done, user then lands on the accounts/profle page to see his/her accounts, and then continues the (global) session, until sign off call is fired. So we carry the token for the entire session, and then may be remaining calls are GET calls etc.
I hope my comment does not come too late. I basically do a very similar thing in Postman. We have different environments and for each environments different test accounts. There are two problems that comes with it. First one is getting overview, switching quickly between envs and users. (I believe Insomnia is better in this regard) and another problem is entering/saving the credentials. Currently I don't have any sensible way to save the credentials, so every time I use it, I save the credentials that are used for creating the bearer token in a variable and remove this variable at the end of the day, as I don't want to have it on my computer. I also use it to switch between users. Is there are elegant solution to this. Like the gui asking for a password and saving it for a limited time, or automatically removing vars or getting the vars from a secure place (like a vault)?
Ultimately, if you’re dealing with temporary tokens and you don’t want to store anything on your device, you’re probably not going to find an “easy” solution. Is there a specific reason you don’t want to store a secret on your device? You could always use AWS secrets manager, setup a limited scope IAM user, and make a dynamic API call for the secret, but IMO this is too much work (unless you have a very clear reason why it’s necessary)
Can someone in Insomnia land tell me if/how to test or send a request to ALL the API endpoints at once? I have a huge list of endpoints, I believe this was possible in Postman, but I can't see anywhere to run a test against ALL the endpoints by clicking one button in Insomnia, instead of having to select every single endpoint and test it manually. Even in the "Test" tab, can't seem to select ALL the endpoints, say for a 200 response test, just has a drop down list of all the endpoints to select one 🤷♂ Driving me insane!
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Simple and OpenSource are also the reasons I am a Insomnia user.
You should now make a new video showing why you switched away from Insomnia
Good timing. Now that Postman has decided to deprecate scratchpad (effectively making it only usable with their cloud, which they desperately tried to sell since years) alternative products is the only way to go. I feel like I liked Postman since it was really the first reasonable lightweight REST client. Then it was mostly the power of habit. I guess it is a time to review those habbits.
Bad timing, insomnia just did the same
I gave up on Insomnia at first because I couldnt work out how to import CURL - then a month later all I found I had to do is just copy and paste it into the URL....goodbye Postman!
How we can import all collections
Inspired a lot from Insomnia, so I have written my own API client named Thor Client.
It was challenging at first, but it has been really motivating, like building my own dream tool.
You can also paste cURL to the input of request URL to import immediately!
Hi Zach, thanks for the video. WIll you be making a longer video with a proper flow in which we pass on the token(after a succcesful logon) , and then making sure this token remains active during the User's total session etc.? e.g. If you're trying to log in to your bank app, and once successul login is done, user then lands on the accounts/profle page to see his/her accounts, and then continues the (global) session, until sign off call is fired. So we carry the token for the entire session, and then may be remaining calls are GET calls etc.
Is there any self or third party reporting system to export test results like postman has Newman?
great vid,
Bruno is here… Goodbye Insomnia
I hope my comment does not come too late. I basically do a very similar thing in Postman. We have different environments and for each environments different test accounts. There are two problems that comes with it. First one is getting overview, switching quickly between envs and users. (I believe Insomnia is better in this regard) and another problem is entering/saving the credentials. Currently I don't have any sensible way to save the credentials, so every time I use it, I save the credentials that are used for creating the bearer token in a variable and remove this variable at the end of the day, as I don't want to have it on my computer. I also use it to switch between users.
Is there are elegant solution to this. Like the gui asking for a password and saving it for a limited time, or automatically removing vars or getting the vars from a secure place (like a vault)?
Ultimately, if you’re dealing with temporary tokens and you don’t want to store anything on your device, you’re probably not going to find an “easy” solution. Is there a specific reason you don’t want to store a secret on your device?
You could always use AWS secrets manager, setup a limited scope IAM user, and make a dynamic API call for the secret, but IMO this is too much work (unless you have a very clear reason why it’s necessary)
What do you think of hoppscotch?
web client http files are even simpler still and easy to check into git
How to import the existing postman collections in Insomnia?
But how did you get that tag in manage environment which says Response ->Body Attribute??
nevermind, needed to restart program after installing plugin.
can we use proxy capture listener like postman has?
Can you talk about different types of authentication?
Is there any way that you can do assertions (which does not have design doc)?
Can someone in Insomnia land tell me if/how to test or send a request to ALL the API endpoints at once? I have a huge list of endpoints, I believe this was possible in Postman, but I can't see anywhere to run a test against ALL the endpoints by clicking one button in Insomnia, instead of having to select every single endpoint and test it manually. Even in the "Test" tab, can't seem to select ALL the endpoints, say for a 200 response test, just has a drop down list of all the endpoints to select one 🤷♂ Driving me insane!
Anyone can mention ram usage in MB for insomnia below this comment
You should give IoTIFY a try if you need so simulate anything complex
I prefer using Apidog over Insomnia and Postman. Much better UI, a lot more complete tools for a developer in general.
plugins 👀
My question is, do i need to create an account to import collections. This is the reason why i am looking an alternative to postman.
Is the free version really limited to a single project only? 🤔
Httpie looks better to me
That does look awesome, might use this for a while