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by tus88 2354 days ago
Curl is free man.
3 comments

I enjoy testing HTTP endpoints by bit-banging an ethernet cable so that I don't have to buy a computer.

In all seriousness - Regardless of the solution Postman/Postwomen/Insomnia/Paw/etc - People use these tools so they can easily manipulate any part of their query, without needing to lookup curl flags and nuances.

Serious question: How do you construct complex curl requests? Do you do it all on the command line? Or you do it in a text editor? If you want to change the field of a form for your post request, how quickly can you change it? Curl is a great tool, but for sandbox-like usage it's just too clunky of a UX IMO.

It's all REST these days, sometimes with JSON payloads. Nothing too hard to mangle together.
I'm not defending them in the least (see my post on yesterday's discussion) but Postman isn't just a UI over curl.

The primary value add is the ability to organize groups of related requests and then run them as part of a test suite and assert against the outcomes. It's essentially a test tool for REST APIs that's accessible to a less technical audience.

Exactly my thoughts. Free and not that hard to use. I guess $96/yr is a good trade off for some UI?