So, here’s how Hoppscotch happened.
You know the drill. You’re developing an app for a client and you need to test every APIs and every APIs response in every method, on every requests.
Our team was already using Postman to test all the variations of an API, but my 7 year old PC couldn't afford to run another Electron app just to see the request responses in all of them. And that’s how it all started.
How about making a tool where you can test your APIs from your browser itself without switching between apps as you work? That would be neat, huh!
hoppscotch
/
hoppscotch
Open source API development ecosystem - https://hoppscotch.io (open-source alternative to Postman, Insomnia)
How it all began
The initial tweet about the idea got 250+ likes and 60+ retweets so people were definitely interested in this kind of tool.
I literally launched Hoppscotch on a dev.to article and wrote about it on Hacker News, HackerNoon, Medium, HashNode, Reddit, Twitter etc.
I saw a guy writing JavaScript today.
No frameworks.
No libraries.
No problems.
He just did it.
Writing JavaScript.
Like a Psychopath.
It was me 🙃
I had some problems with CORS in deployment, but I found a quick workaround. I used Vue.js and apparently migrated to Nuxt.js.
At that point I started thinking that the tool can actually be published as a standalone web app, and the WebSocket testing feature can just be an addition. So I shifted my goal and starting working towards that.
I added few themes, polished up the UI a bit, struggled for 30 mins to come up with a name and..... drumroll Hoppscotch it is. I setup a GitHub repo for people who were interested to contribute.
After I open sourced the code, polished up the UI, and finished bunch of other smaller things, hoppscotch.io was live 🎉
I actually wrapped up work at 4:30 AM because I just couldn’t go to sleep without finishing that one thing 😅
Features
- 💚 Open Source
- 🔥 Runs online
- 🚀 Multi-platform & multi-device support
- 📱 Progressive Web App
- 🔌 WebSocket testing
- 📡 Server Sent Events testing
- 🌩 Socket.IO testing
- 🦟 MQTT testing
- 💫 GraphQL testing
- 🌈 Customizations
- ⏰ History
- 📁 Collections
- 🌐 Proxy
- 📜 Pre-Request Scripts & environment variables β
- 🐳 Docker
- ⛳ Keyboard Shortcuts
- ✅ Post-Request Tests β
- Full features
After the launch, analytics were going crazy! Got 17,700+ stars on GitHub, made it to GitHub Trending couple of times, became #2 product of the day on Product Hunt, got featured in Indie Hackers, Hacker news, Hacker noon, BetaList, YouTube & open source dev podcast etc.
Apart from the project development, there were other goodies happened since initial release:
- Got first financial backer 🔥 on Open Collective
- Released badges β
- Hoppscotch's icon got featured in simpleicons.org
- Created Telegram public community
- Started Discord server
- Caneco made new banner
I was solving my own problem with the hope that I'll also gonna solve other people’s problems. The most important thing about is that in the end, you get a lot of amazing and positive feedback, which is basically the only thing that drives you to do better and more awesome work! 🎉
If you think Hoppscotch is worthy of existing as a free, fast alternative to Postman, please consider giving us a confidence boost! Star the repo on GitHub, Tweet, share among your friends, teams and contacts!
Support
I want to thank everyone for your feedback and support. You can follow me on Twitter if you’re interested in future updates.
If you want a heads up on my next projects, or just want to chat about the web, make sure to follow me @liyasthomas 💙. If any of my projects helped you please consider Buying me a coffee or making a donation on PayPal.
Oldest comments (46)
"I was that guy."
Funny, I always assumed you were a girl...unless you're using "guy" in the gender-agnostic form ;)
Yeah! I've heard this many times before.
Nice! It seems to have come a long way since i initially checked it out back when you first posted it!
Yes, there's been 650 commits since v0.1.0 🎉
Seems an awesome project, I going to try it out! Btw, Good Article Liyas ! 🦄
Thanks you! ❤️
Fantastic! The UI looks very good. It would be awesome if you add WebSocket support.
And a light theme would be useful as well. Some people like me having trouble with using dark mode in UI. I have some kind of problem with my eyes and UIs looks blurry in dark mode :-(
UPD: Sorry didn't find customization screen before :-)
WebSocket support is already landed from v0.1.0 🎉
postwoman.io/websocket
Congratulations on 1.0! The UI looks fantastic. I look forward to giving this a try 😃
Glad you liked it! 💜
Looking forward on how Postwoman could ease up your development! Do share among your friends/team ⚡
It looks very good and promising. But I have readability problem of a response object when a light theme is activated. Yellow values on white background are barely seen, have to highlight text to see it. See attached picture.
P.S It looks like I am going to delete Postman from my machine. :)
thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i...
I'm obsessed with dark theme which why i concentrated on dark themes first. But now I'll work more on theme white mode. Thanks for pinging this. Next priority is light theme. If you'd like to suggest a theme pallet for light theme, shoot a DM, or perhaps a PR? 😌
I just pushed a quick fix for readability problem on light-themes.
Just do a hard refresh Ctrl + Shift + r to update to the latest version and boom! issues is fixed 🔥
(if issues persists, clear cookies and refresh)
Now I even without glasses can read it :) Thanks :)
Great to finally meet the man behind the legend!
🙏😌🛸👽
Congrats! I was briefly observing Postwoman when it was first published but didn't feel the urge to switch from Postman. Now then, the 1.0 feature list demands me to give it another spin.
You should look at our roadmap and stuffs we pipelined for future 🔥👽🛸
I shared Postwoman on LinkedIn, glad to see that you're launching it!
Thanks. Let the world know Postwoman exists.
Hey Liyas,
You know, it was much needed. Thanks for giving us a great app. Will be grateful and I will try to contribute to the project as well.
Thats awesome! 🙌🏼
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