[HN Gopher] Hoppscotch desktop application
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       Hoppscotch desktop application
        
       Author : 0xedb
       Score  : 68 points
       Date   : 2023-11-09 10:08 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hoppscotch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hoppscotch.com)
        
       | ReactiveJelly wrote:
       | > Hoppscotch is a lightweight, web-based API development suite.
        
       | anon23432343 wrote:
       | First either add "Show HN" or "AD".
       | 
       | Second I use bruno https://www.usebruno.com/.
        
         | darylteo wrote:
         | "We don't talk about bruno"
         | 
         | I'd say Hoppscotch is aimed more at teams looking for a Postman
         | replacement - particularly with regards to the cloud-syncing
         | functionality.
         | 
         | Our team's looked into it in the past, and unfortunately we
         | determined that the cost of having to maintain it at a
         | sufficient SLA + the cost of potential interruption to our
         | critical business functions if we got it wrong was not
         | something we could absorb at the time. Easier to just pay for
         | Postman for the peace of mind.
         | 
         | Edit: ah I looked into bruno a bit more. It does syncing via
         | git which might be enticing. I'll research more.
        
           | anon23432343 wrote:
           | Why do we not talk about bruno?
        
             | darylteo wrote:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvWRMAU6V-c
        
       | tomalbrc wrote:
       | It's an Electron app, isn't it
        
         | pprotas wrote:
         | Quote from the article: "The Hoppscotch Desktop app is built on
         | the robust Tauri framework using Rust"
         | 
         | Previously, the recommended desktop experience was to install
         | the app as a PWA on your desktop.
        
         | zikero wrote:
         | Built with Tauri. No electron app is a 16.5MB download.
         | 
         | (I have no affiliation, just a fan)
        
           | jeroenhd wrote:
           | > No electron app is a 16.5MB download.
           | 
           | The sad thing is that it definitely could be. If you install
           | Bitwarden (an Electron based password manager) from the Arch
           | user repos, Electron is a separate dependency shared with
           | other Electron applications. This means Bitwarden itself can
           | be downloaded in just 5.4 MB (compressed, of course).
           | 
           | Tauri is not that different, though its dependency is the
           | system browser rather than the Electron framework itself. I
           | think Tauri's approach is better, but a lot of Electron
           | applications could be only a few megabytes in size if
           | dependency management wasn't done so badly in modern software
           | distribution.
           | 
           | Unsurprisingly, the Linux AppImage is 87MB in size because it
           | comes with a runtime. There's a smaller (17MB) .deb file, but
           | I don't see any references to a package repository, so I
           | guess on Debian based systems it'll just make you download
           | the .deb every time to install it manually.
        
         | sbruchmann wrote:
         | Read the post.
        
       | martypitt wrote:
       | Nice. Downloaded and installed.
       | 
       | Clean UI (almost bordering on a rip-off of Postman.. but I guess
       | familiarity helps users get going faster).
       | 
       | Lovely to see that things aren't held behind a Login button, ala
       | Postman and Insomnia (Kong really misread the room on their
       | latest update).
       | 
       | Login and accounts seem like they're there, but very clearly
       | optional.
       | 
       | Nicely done, Hoppscotch team!
        
       | glub103011 wrote:
       | It has a clean UI and can be self-hosted.
       | 
       | The downside is that - Only one workspace is available when
       | offline.
       | 
       | - You can't point your Workspace data to a specific directory
       | like bruno does, and manage the data like git or other clouds.
       | 
       | - Self-hosting login is not possible in the desktop app.
       | 
       | - Cannot save specific responses like postman.
       | 
       | - Can't create documentation for a folder/request.
       | 
       | Now that we've just launched, I think we have a lot to look
       | forward to. I hope it evolves to not force cloud synchronization
       | like postman and insomnia, and to be free to use offline.
        
         | omniscient_oce wrote:
         | It's amazing how powerful and clean Postman and Insomnia both
         | felt when they were young and followed such similar
         | trajectories into bloat and UI-unfriendliness hell.
        
       | pprotas wrote:
       | I like that they are an open-source Postman, but I also dislike
       | that they are just a copy-and-paste of Postman.
       | 
       | Did Hoppscotch try to be innovative in any of its features?
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | This is about their desktop app which is _not_ open-source.
         | Yes, it 's an easy mistake to make because they use every trick
         | in the book to make you think it is.
        
       | Stem0037 wrote:
       | Lightning-fast and lightweight sounds great! What kinds of
       | security measures are in place for the desktop app, especially
       | with sandboxing?
        
       | kalev wrote:
       | Although sometimes too much, I think the way fly.io starts their
       | blog posts with a description of what they do is brilliant. I
       | have no idea what Hoppscotch is and reading the first paragraphs
       | I still don't.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | Seems to be a trend in hn posts. I guess people are so immersed
         | in their work that they don't realise others need context
        
           | cassianoleal wrote:
           | OP shared a URL to a post. Context is in the comments.
           | 
           | HN's submissions are either a URL with a non-editorialised
           | title, or some text (like what you get in Show HN and Ask HN
           | posts) - not both.
        
             | Havoc wrote:
             | > Context is in the comments.
             | 
             | Maybe I'm old fashioned but I'd think a blog post should
             | have sufficient context in the intro in standalone fashion
        
               | cassianoleal wrote:
               | That's fair but the blog is not an HN post.
        
         | preciousoo wrote:
         | If took me until seeing the benchmark comparisons to Postman to
         | realize
        
       | rizky05 wrote:
       | I just tried it. It feels like postman, very slow when typing
       | json body. But it's small, and startup time is instant. I prefer
       | bruno, but we do not talk about bruno.
        
       | ctenb wrote:
       | What does it do? Can't figure that out from the linked page.
        
         | matteason wrote:
         | It's an API endpoint testing app, like Postman and Insomnia
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | I looked over the home page and even then I couldn't make sense
         | of it. Calling something an "API client" or an "Essential Tools
         | for API Development" is utterly useless; every piece of
         | software is an "API client". Putting "keyboard shortcuts" as a
         | marketing point on your home page isn't exactly helping things
         | either.
         | 
         | It looks like it's another of those HTTP call generator tools,
         | like Postman but online. I guess the target audience is people
         | who consider "API" to mean "HTTP calls", which is why it took
         | me so long to get it.
         | 
         | Looks like a decent alternative for Postman now that Postman is
         | forcing their online sync stuff down everyone's throats.
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | Nothing beats the Jetbrains IDEs' HTTP client for this. They
       | should release it as a standalone product.
       | 
       | It's all text based so fits nicely into your repo in the native
       | format, no exporting etc.
        
         | mortallywounded wrote:
         | hurl.dev
        
           | user3939382 wrote:
           | That's not bad either. One thing you get with Jetbrains which
           | I don't see there is the ability to use arbitrary npm
           | packages to script pre and post response. There is some
           | testing there but the features look fixed from the docs.
        
         | okeuro49 wrote:
         | Does it support environment variables that you can dynamically
         | set, e.g. for an access token?
        
           | enobrev wrote:
           | Yes, it does.
           | 
           | https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-response-
           | handling-e...
           | 
           | Edit: I linked to the wrong doc, that one is good for hitting
           | an auth endpoint as a first step and then using the token on
           | subsequent requests.
           | 
           | For vars (including per-env vars), the documentation is here:
           | 
           | https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/exploring-http-
           | syntax.ht...
           | 
           | Only issue I really have with it recently is that graphql
           | requests are poorly documented and wonky as hell and you
           | literally have to fight the ide to edit the query
           | 
           | Otherwise it's been pretty great.
           | 
           | Also I have nothing to do with intellij's company besides
           | being a happily paying customer for many years.
        
         | sirwitti wrote:
         | I didn't know that, thanks!
        
         | utybo wrote:
         | You might like httpyac then. It's like JetBrain's HTTP client
         | with a lot more features.
        
         | leeman2016 wrote:
         | There is also a similar one for VS Code: "REST Client" (an
         | extension)
        
         | markcollin wrote:
         | Ive tried Jetbrains Http client in the past; but I felt
         | comfortable with a simple UI like Insomnia
         | 
         | Mostly used Insomnia for a long time, until I came across
         | Bruno. Its been a game changer for me. Requests get saved as
         | plain text files and still provides a great UI to work with
         | 
         | Basically all the benefits of text based files combined with a
         | nice UI.
        
       | yellow_lead wrote:
       | After determining what they do by going to the home page
       | (postman/insomnia/bruno replacement), I saw the Google logo. Does
       | Google seriously use such a product? These logo bars are really
       | interesting, as everyone seems to have a different idea as to
       | what they imply.
        
         | beart wrote:
         | Google has thousands of employees right? They probably use
         | every software product out there.
        
       | sirius87 wrote:
       | If you're just looking to store API collections locally, an
       | alternative I use is a VS Code plugin called ThunderClient [1].
       | 
       | imho, dev centric tools that care about system resource usage
       | should just integrate with the IDE when possible. It's already
       | running!
       | 
       | [1] https://www.thunderclient.com
        
         | dominick-cc wrote:
         | Seems like you have to pay for offline collection runs. I don't
         | understand why you should have to pay for that if it isn't
         | using their cloud to execute them.
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | > It's already running!
         | 
         | So is the OS.
        
           | PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
           | This is the kind of snarky response I can approve of.
        
       | lloydatkinson wrote:
       | Let me guess:
       | 
       | - Electron
       | 
       | - Postman was OK until it was enshitified, so along came Insomnia
       | which was never quite as good as original Postman and then itself
       | became enshitifed
       | 
       | - This too will suffer the same fate as the previous two and will
       | gradually also adopt a busy, unworkable, confusing UI
       | 
       | This is why I've started using Hurl because that doesn't even
       | have a UI. Bonus: can be kept in source control and run as part
       | of CI/CD.
       | 
       | https://www.communication-generation.com/enshitification/
       | 
       | https://hurl.dev/
        
       | orliesaurus wrote:
       | Anyone knows what template they used for their website?
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | It kinda looks like the default Tailwind template:
         | https://tailwindui.com/templates/spotlight
         | 
         | Live preview: https://spotlight.tailwindui.com/
         | 
         | Not an exact match but similar-looking. It's just sort your
         | generic "web platform" look, similar to Vercel/Next/Remix/Astro
        
         | markcollin wrote:
         | would love to know too. The website is gorgeous.
        
       | haswell wrote:
       | I switched to Paw a few years back (now RapidAPI and now free),
       | and haven't looked back. The bloat/performance issues with
       | Postman were too much, and I've really enjoyed the native
       | experience with Paw.
       | 
       | Still always happy to see competition in this space because the
       | existing tools are useful, but can still get better.
       | 
       | Although I have a feeling that it won't be too many years before
       | we forget why we ever needed these API testing tools while some
       | API consuming LLM takes over the space.
       | 
       | - https://paw.cloud
        
       | jerrygoyal wrote:
       | i still use postman but as vscode extension
        
       | benrutter wrote:
       | I love hoppscotch and I'm a happy user or their PWA- not sure I
       | understand the benefit that a framework like Tauri provides in
       | addition? (They mention filesystem based workflows, but my
       | understanding was that was also possible within PWA?)
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-09 23:02 UTC)