Technology @lemmy.world HowManyNimons @lemmy.world 10mo ago

Enshitification hits Postman. POSTMAN!

community.postman.com Collections in lightweight client

In regards to the topic that has been closed recently: Collections not displayed after update - #8 by danny-dainton So how exactly does one use collections now for people who literally can’t connect the postman client to an account (login = literally impossible)? Exporting my settings is all well ...

I'm a bit late to the party here because I haven't needed Postman for a while, but how is it okay that now we have to LOG IN TO POSTMAN and send our API requests to them for them to store on their own cloud?

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I've been out of web dev a couple of years myself and was confused that HTTPie (my favorite curl alternative for terminal testing) now had a very Postman-like GUI interface. Apparently, the need to continually update everything means that old good apps like Postman get enshittified and old simple tools like httpie get turned into bloated apps.

Seems like Microsoft got really interested in postman in 2022, that's probably when the issues really started. MS wants everything you do to be in the cloud.
- I'm so sick of it: Apparently a software is considered "dead" if it doesn't get weekly updates. This is unsustainable. IMO there's usually a point when a software is actually complete until some lib breaks or so. Especially with the UNIX mantra that every program should just have one purpose.
- I had the same thing when I was getting back into webdev. A httpie UI what?
  
  Thankfully the cli tool seems unchanged so far.
I haven't done web API work for a while now, but postman had gone to shit even back then, to the point that I actively looked for alternatives. Ended up using an extension for VS Code called Thunder Client if I recall correctly. It was a bit rough around the edges but it got the job done without me having to log in anywhere or upload my requests anywhere.
Any good alternatives?
- Insomnia. You don't have to use an account. It's slightly annoying but the application works well.
  
  Insomnia suffers from the same issue, use the fork https://github.com/ArchGPT/insomnium
- I really like Bruno
  
  Edit: https://www.usebruno.com/
- The reason I hadn't used Postman in a while was because I had put Swagger on all my APIs. If that's an option for you, I recommend it.
  
  For an alternative, I reckon you can't go past cUrl. Get a request working, then parametrise it with whatever scripting/programming language you like best, copy paste edit rinse repeat, and you've got yourself a makeshift Postman.
Postman is also crazy expensive when paying for a team account. Like, there’s no way you represent that much value to the product. We just moved to cURL and have a git project where we store common requests to share.
- You may already know this, but jq makes working with JSON at the CLI more productive.
- This is it. The point of the enshitification is to stop people from sharing a Postman collection file for free on Git, and make them pay a subscription to access their team's requests online.
  
  Bloody no. No good steward of their boss's money would sign up for that.
I don't have a problem with storing my collections in the cloud behind a login anymore than I do have my company email hosted. It makes my tests accessible anywhere without having to resort to a different file sharing service like Dropbox or Drive.
- Wouldn't it be nice to have the option to keep all that shit local though? Like there used to be?
  
  Here's what I want to know: if the point is to make money, why do they need all my requests to MUST live on their server? How does that help them? There must be an answer and I want no part of it.
- That is meant for hobby devs. At work i can understand that, because if the works test data gets stolen (by possible data leak or exploit) who cares. But it is Postman just digs itself a grave with that, piece by piece.
  
  my work banned it recently because it now requires the cloud
- ...or Git? Where your source code is?

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