I started this project a couple of months ago, and people have tried to create postman alternatives on the terminal. This project is purely based on the need to write a TUI and I don’t care about the other options that are built to do the same. But comparing them with my approach and vision will be the best thing that I can try, I might find issues in other projects that I can solve in my implementation or can pinpoint issues in my implementation that I can solve in the same run.
Overview of the Tools
I think it is always a good thing to reinvent the wheel, You can always build something that someone’s already built before. There are two types of people some invent stuff and extend functionalities of what exists.
How many browser companies are there, Some even name themselves as “Browser Company”. With Chrome and Firefox in the market, why do people invest money in building new browsers, All they trying to do is find some small pain points of their workflows and fix them. Out of all these fancy browsers I am sticking to Firefox as it is my personal favorite, This article is not about the browser companies but about the Postman alternatives on terminals.
Before starting the project I search for a Postman alternative on the terminal. I found a bunch of terminal applications written for the exact purpose in different languages. In this article, I will compare 3 Postman TUI alternatives that are similar to what I am building and trying to find some points that make my project unique in one way or another.
ATAC
https://github.com/Julien-cpsn/ATAC
- Language: Rust
- Description: A simple API client (postman like) in your terminal
- Framework: Ratatui
Posting
https://github.com/darrenburns/posting
- Language: Python
- Description: The modern API client that lives in your terminal.
- Framework: Textualize
go-gurl
https://github.com/blackmann/go-gurl
- Language: Go
- Description: Curl TUI with Go as Postman replacement
- Framework: Bubble Tea
There are not that many postman alternatives on terminal, but found this article list 30 GUI alternatives to postman 😅. https://apidog.com/blog/top-postman-alternative-open-source.
Conclusion
Out of those alternatives I prefer posting more, ATAC uses the same TUI framework as fetched and contributed by a Ratatui core contributor. Bubble Tea is another really good TUI framework written by Go and one of my projects based on it is lazytf.
I always think using terminal tools makes things easier, the best way to decide is to experiment with each tool and see which one aligns with your workflow and goals. Happy coding!