Bruno HTTP client, offline alternative to Postman/Insomnia

lonewalk@lemm.ee to Programming@programming.dev – 166 points –
usebruno.com

insomnia just enshittified itself and requires cloud login like postman, and force upgrades you from the old version even if you disable updates. this blocked me at work today.

this client looks great, wanted to boost it here in case anyone else got screwed by Insomnia this morning.

25

Do companies know that it's just a fucking HTTP client? You compete with curl smh

Well to be fair the value postman & co provide is more in storing multiple requests and parameter sets in a somewhat orderly fashion. But yeah ... that's not something I'd open my wallet for either.

Does curl have an easy save feature and folder structure, so you can repeatedly call and tweak http requests during production? Curl is super easy for singular calls, not for large projects.

Yes, it's called a text file. If you put .sh at the end of the file name, you can even run it directly from the command line.

You can even copy full curl commands from browsers in the network tab so you can reproduce the exact request.

It's pretty cumbersome if you have to debug APIs, let's be honest here

Such a shame Insomnia went down this route.

Hope I can export my data into Bruno HTTP, although really no big deal if I can't tbh - will just build up those requests again.

Why does it feel like API testing and documentation apps are low hanging fruit for enshittification 😭

bc why just have HTTP requests and plain text when you can c l o u d S a a S

Oh eww I haven't booted insomnia in a bit, that's irritating. From a quick glance this looks solid, going to give it a try.

Ditto. Now I can take the reins and replace it now instead of when I need it.

I think as the enshitification cycle speeds up on the net, the tolerance threshold from users will go down and they’ll switch earlier. MAYBE this will help interoperability. Trying out being less cynical lately and I’m not sure I believe myself.

Doesn't support OpenAPI.. sigh.

might be a cool thing to try and contribute

out of curiosity, what does that mean precisely? being able to import/export an OpenAPI spec? (not super familiar with OpenAPI, I know you can get an OpenAPI collection in a json file)

Was shocked to find you can't even save postman requests now without logging in

cory doctorow is the prophet of our times

I love the concept to store request in files and that you can use git to version! Lovely

Been using it a whole two days now, since Insomnia went to shit, like it a lot, lightweight and does what's it supposed to do and nothing else, while not being in a cloud.

OP, I dunno if you've seen it yet but you're featured on their testimonials list!

yep, the author reached out and asked if they could include me - I am more than happy to share my displeasure of Insomnia and pleasure in FOSS ;)

I know this isn't going to work for everyone but thunder client for vscode and the integrated rest client in intellij work decently. I will have to take a look at this client though since I do use insomnia for some work specific stuff

Glad I saw this since I just redownloaded Insomnia yesterday and thought "oh".

By the way, it's not required to log in. There's a button below the login form that lets you use it without signing up.

yeah but it removes access to all but one collection - you can’t organize things into separate collections without a login anymore. plus if you have existing collections, it’ll block access to it unless you downgrade (which seems to forcibly update even if you turn updates off)

Oh sweet. I had just found APIDog the other day which seemed better than Postman. Will check this out too!