Show HN: Insomnia REST Client now open-source | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Insomnia REST Client now open-source

insomnia.rest

218 pointsgschier53 comments

Hey everyone! I've been working on Insomnia for over two years now and am super excited to be able to share it with the world. Let me know if you have any questions.

I've been using it since it was featured in HN some time back. It's a very nice improvement over the chrome extensions I had to use in the past.

One question: should I resubmit bugs previously sent to support@insomnia.rest to the github bug tracker?

Thanks! Yes, please do. I have a few dozen emails in my inbox that I have yet to get around to yet.

The process to update Insomnia in Linux is quite painful. the only option is downloading a new .deb every time.

I haven't had the time yet to learn how to host an apt repository. Maybe one day :)

It’s not that hard. I recommend reprepro.

Look into setting up a PPA on launchpad.net, or use Bintray. Both are easier to operate than reprepro, especially if you don't care to become an expert in Debian package hosting.

You can use the Open Build Service (build.opensuse.org) to build Debian/Ubuntu packages and I believe it also supports publishing an apt repo.

Now it's opensource, we could create an apt repository for the opensource version.

I love insomnia, use it for Ubuntu, and love updates.. but hate updating :).

That would be awesome. Here's the issue for it if you want to talk more about it: https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia/issues/182

In arch it's definitely not bad.

Ya, Arch is easier because all you need is a Git repo with a file that links to the package. For apt, you have to have a full web server with a specific structure AFAIK.

Tools such as aptly will happily generate that structure for you. Hosting can happen on an s3 bucket or any Webserver that can serve static files.

Insomnia is awesome and has become my go-to tool for testing REST API's. Your work is very much appreciated. Thank you!!

Does anybody have any direct experience with how this compares to Paw[1] (a "native" Mac app) in terms of performance, features, etc.? I currently use Paw and am happy with it, but this seems like it could potentially be a nice product to recommend to Linux and Windows users.

[1] https://paw.cloud

Just wanted to say that, as the creator of Insomnia, I love Paw. If I didn't need a cross-platform app at my last job, I might have never started working on Insomnia.

Can you import Paw files? Plan on having extensions like Paw?

You can't at the moment but there is a project that Paw is leading to make converting API formats easy: https://github.com/luckymarmot/API-Flow

I've started playing around with an Insomnia plugin framework but don't yet have a firm schedule on it.

Try this (https://rest.secapps.com) It is as close as it get to Paw. Also this (https://fuzzer.secapps.com) for fuzz-testing.

It works quite well on Linux (Ubuntu, XFCE).

Looks very nice!

But: GPLv3 and code generation is a scary combo. Do you sell a commercial license? If not, you should add a license exception.

Good point. I didn't think that GPL-generated code must abide by the same license, but it seems to be a debated topic. Best to be safe.

the output of a program is generally not licensed the same as the program, unless by prior agreement. But of course, IANAL...

Unless the output contains the source code of the program. That's the reason for the GNU Bison additional permissions clause.

You should find out if Harry Potter was written in Word and buy some MS stocks, then.

gcc would like to have a word with you.

GCC already has a license exception, because the output includes code written for GCC, as well as code written by the user.

Well, kinda. GCC includes an exemption for the runtime.

Yes - the runtime is added to your compiled source and provides a combined work. Not linked as a dynamic library.

FYI, the blog post and LICENSE file say GPL3, but the bottom of README.md says AGPLv3.

Thanks. Copy-pasta. Fixed.

I've been using Insomnia for the past couple of months (switched from Postman) and I'm really liking it. The workspace switching is especially powerful.

One thing though: every time the auto-updater runs, it places a shortcut on my desktop (Windows), which is really annoying.

How does this compare to Postman?

I greatly prefer it, although if postman doesn't have any annoyances for you, then insomnia might not be better for your use case.

Mostly the environments & variables make insomnia pretty fantastic.

How do its environments and variables differ from postman?

It loads much faster, which matters a great deal to me.

It isn't dependent on your browser, which has made testing much more reliable in my use cases. My workplace uses a lot of single-sign-on stuff which makes it hard to authenticate using service accounts and whatnot.

When you tried Postman were you using the web app version (eg, in the Chrome store) or the native version (eg, in the Mac App Store)?

I wasn't aware it had a desktop app!

I wasn't either for a long time, and the desktop app has been much smoother in my experience.

Yes, recently noticed that I had some file upload issues with browser-based postman, and they suddenly disappeared when using the standalone. Not sure why, same settings. Looked like the browser based couldn't get the file/form encoding right.

A "Run in Insomnia" button would be great which I could add to the API documentation of my project (like this insomnia://run?method=post&url=example.com%2Fapi%2F)

That would be awesome. I just added a (still undocumented) protocol handler to import remote files (like insomnia://app/import?uri=https://foo.bar/file.json).

Putting the data right in the URL would be awesome as well, though.

I work on a system that integrates with several APIs of varying degrees of quality. Using Insomnia easily saves me hours of effort every week.

Ooh, I wonder if this supports Swagger.

I'd be interested to know this as well. I've been solving this problem while building Assertible; generate a suite of API tests from a Swagger spec: https://assertible.com/blog/testing-an-api-using-swagger

Thanks, this looks neat! I like how you output the SSL handshake in the "Timeline" tab.

I use this nearly every day and it has really helped me build better middleware to connect various REST APIs together. Well worth $50/year.

Thanks! Glad it's helping :)

Is there any plan to support importing the Postman v4 data format?

I assume you mean version 4 of the Postman application. Version 4 of Postman can export v1 or v2 formats (the version of the export format itself), which can be selected when exporting a single Postman collection.

That worked, thanks. I assumed Postman version 4 must have had a different data format since when I exported all my data, importing it didn't work. It must be a different, proprietary format.

Postman only has a v1 and v2 data format. No proprietary format. The formats and the SDKs [1] to use them are also open source. The transformer for converting between versions is also open source [2]. Importing works fine for me. You could leave an issue on Github if you found a bug while importing.

[1] - https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-collection

[2] - https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-collection-transforme...

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