

Show HN: I've built a REST Test client in my spare time - namigop
http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/home.aspx
Hi HN,&#60;p&#62;In my spare time (evenings and weekends) I've built 3 products which have been relatively successful even with little advertising (only google ads budgeted at $30 per day).  The latest one is WcfStorm.Rest; which is a REST service test client. I built it because I found that the current tools did not have the features I wanted such as, intellisense when working with HTTP headers, syntax highlighting for JSON messages, etc.&#60;p&#62;I'm continually trying to improve these products and would very much love get your feedback.  Every suggestion is welcome!&#60;p&#62;(My apologies for any grammatical mistakes. English is not my first language)
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junto
Just out of interest, what can WCFStorm do over the built-in wcftestclient?

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx>

The WCFStorm.Rest client is more interesting. At the moment I'm manually
composing requests using Fiddler2 for localhost testing, or
<http://apigee.com> for public facing services. A dedicated REST client sounds
pretty cool.

One thing I'd purchase is an extension to WCF that builds a developers API
documentation and test website around the WCF contracts:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7346522/auto-generate-
an-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7346522/auto-generate-an-api-
explorer-for-wcf-services)

ASP.NET WebAPI has an APIExplorer interface exposed to allow you build your
own, but nothing out of the box:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-
net...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-net-web-api-
generating-a-web-api-help-page-using-apiexplorer.aspx)

One alternative is using the Chrome PostMan extension to craft REST requests
and here is an example of the APIExplorer interface being used to expose
PostMan PostCollections, which I thought was a great idea:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/06/15/using-a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/06/15/using-
apiexplorer-to-export-api-information-to-postman-a-chrome-extension-for-
testing-web-apis.aspx)

~~~
namigop
Thank you for the feedback and for the links. The one about building
documentation around WCF contracts is very interesting.

Regarding WCFStorm, it has several features that are not in the built-in
WCFTestClient such as (1) Save requests and responses and organize it into a
"project", (2) Performance testing, (3) An object editor similar to
WCFTestClient but with support for more types and others.
<http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more.aspx>

Regarding WCFStorm.Rest, it does have similarities with POSTMan (and other
clients). I'm not very familiar with POSTMan but the list of features for
WCFSTorm.Rest is here <http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/learn-more-rest.aspx>

~~~
junto
We have several clients for whom we are building APIs using WCF. We would buy
a plug-and-play WCF extension that could provide a customisable developer's
playground to test the API.

I will try your WCFStorm trial product when I pick up the next WCF development
project.

Thanks for all the information.

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alpb
I looked at the screenshots of that project, you said it has modern "Metro"
user interface, and I believe <http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/screenshots.aspx>
this has nothing to do with Metro UI patterns. What about this?

~~~
namigop
Oh those are screenshots for another product, WCFStorm (which is for WCF
Testing). It's different from WCFStorm.Rest, the REST test client that is kind
of metro - inspired. I have some screenshots here:
[http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/wcfstormrest-quickstart-
guide.as...](http://www.wcfstorm.com/wcf/wcfstormrest-quickstart-guide.aspx)

You're right though. I should make that clear on that screenshots page.

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alourenco
I love WCFStorm! We have an enterprise license and I got most devs on the
project I'm on to use it to test the webservices we're building. Now I'm
working on using it to automate functional testing for our code.

~~~
namigop
Thanks!

If you have feedback on how to better improve WCFStorm, please do let me know.

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duiker101
nice, I like it, but I have found a small defect on the grid
<http://imgur.com/pq2Mm> on Win 7 64bit

~~~
namigop
Thanks for the feedback! I think that is related to the charting component.
I'll go have a closer look.

