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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

What are the typical use-cases for things like this?

I've used Paw and Postman in the past, but never for more than 2 endpoints in one go, never for more than an hour or so in one session. I've only ever got value out of them as "slightly quicker than a Python notebook" solutions for testing out a hypothesis.

The only other thing I can think of is maybe as a way to pass the understanding of an API's nuances from one developer to another, but I've never needed to do that at any higher level than writing the one-weird-trick to make it work into an email to pass on that knowledge.

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I personally often need the output from one service as input for another. With the new input often requiring a transformation. Auxl can function as a low friction environment to organise that without it getting cluttered.

I also think a lot of API clients tend to obfuscate flows like, for example, an OAuth authentication. Making each step visible and having that extra granularity can help with customisation and debugging.

Other than that, purely from a usability perspective, I think it’s fun to use.

Auxl looks good in that respect but maybe I wasn't clear enough in my question.

What's the typical use-case of apps that let you make requests to APIs via a GUI?

I've used them _briefly_ as part of a development process before, but never enough to justify buying one (I'd just spend a couple of minutes longer to write a Python script). Is that what most people are using them for? Am I missing a use-case?

It’s a tool in a developers toolbox. Some use it, some don’t. Similar to the debugger vs printf debate.

These apps can be useful for testing, developing and exploring APIs and they can function as GUI for services that don’t have one.

For example a former client used Postman as a client to perform administrative tasks for which there was no UI yet. Most of these tools have feature to save common request flows and share them with your team.

I think the market here is people that can't or won't crank out a script or CLI to do the same thing. That audience has become relatively fair in size as programming has grown.

Paw's great for figuring out someone else's poorly documented API. Sure I could code up the equivalent, but not going to waste cycles reinventing a tool that pays for itself in less than an hour of saved time

I think it's a creature-comfort for webdevs who don't like getting their hands dirty.

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