
Show HN: Insomnia REST Client now open-source - gschier
https://insomnia.rest/blog/open-source-announcement/
======
gschier
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.

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

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

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thejosh
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 :).

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gschier
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](https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia/issues/182)

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eddyg
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](https://paw.cloud)

~~~
gschier
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.

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dorian-graph
Can you import Paw files? Plan on having extensions like Paw?

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gschier
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](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.

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gnud
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.

~~~
gschier
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.

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

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

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

~~~
gschier
Thanks. Copy-pasta. Fixed.

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timvdalen
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.

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deepanchor
How does this compare to Postman?

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mod
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.

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gramstrong
How do its environments and variables differ from postman?

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BrunoJo
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)

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gschier
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](https://foo.bar/file.json)).

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

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nbrempel
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.

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freestockoption
Ooh, I wonder if this supports Swagger.

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CodyReichert
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](https://assertible.com/blog/testing-an-api-using-swagger)

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max23_
Thanks, this looks neat! I like how you output the SSL handshake in the
"Timeline" tab.

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tthayer
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.

~~~
gschier
Thanks! Glad it's helping :)

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

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gschier
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.

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rhinoceraptor
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.

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ratpik
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](https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-collection)

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

