APIs are the backbone of modern web and while Postman has been the most widely used tool for years, there are plenty of good options out there.
Each alternative brings unique features to fit the different needs of developers and teams alike.
Today, let’s explore Requestly as an open source tool that might be the best API client for developers to test and debug APIs.
Let's jump in.
In a nutshell, we are covering these topics in detail.
A complete breakdown of all the features of Requestly as an API client.
Why is Requestly API Client is better alternative to Postman?
Requestly is an open source tool to support the developer ecosystem, you can star the repo to show support.
1. A complete breakdown of all the features of Requestly as an API client.
Requestly provides a fully featured API Client for developers to create API Contracts & test their APIs.
Other Web-based API clients proxy your API request through their internal server but with Requestly API client, your API request is directly sent to your server (which is more secure).
It has a great User Interface and is an open source, secure alternative to Postman. You can explore yourself at app.requestly.io/api-client.
✅ Manage API Collections. ✅ Manage variables in environments. ✅ Local log of API Requests for history. ✅ Import and export API contracts and collections from various sources, including cURL, OpenAPI, Postman and more. ✅ Collaboration through Team Workspaces.
🎯 What is an API Client?
An API client is a tool that makes it easy to interact with an API (Application Programming Interface) that handles transforming data between your language and the data type used by the API.
This helps users, even those with limited coding skills, explore, test, and debug APIs quickly. Without it, you would have to deal with complex networking and write a lot of code, making the process slower and more complicated.
✅ API clients allow users to easily send various types of requests (such as GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) to an API.
✅ They handle the responses from the API, presenting the data in a more understandable format.
✅ Developers can use it to test their own APIs or third-party APIs, making it easier to identify issues and verify functionality.
If you're curious to know more about the best practices and the benefits, this guide by testfully is a great place to start.
🎯 Why is Requestly API Client more secure?
Unlike many web-based clients that route requests through internal servers, Requestly sends requests directly to your API server.
Requests made through Requestly hit the API server directly, eliminating the extra hop through an internal server. This direct approach minimizes the risk of exposing sensitive information such as authentication tokens and cookies associated with intermediary servers.
CORS is another security feature implemented by browsers that restricts web pages from making requests to a domain different from the one that served the web page.
That is why, many web-based clients route requests through their own servers to bypass CORS restrictions. While on the other hand, Requestly uses Chrome extension APIs, which allows direct communication with APIs while adhering to CORS policies without compromising security.
Let me explain in simpler words. When you hit any API endpoint, Requestly creates an HTTP request and sends a message to the extension background process, which internally makes the call to the actual API endpoint and returns the response.
You just need to install the browser Extension and it requires no extra setup.
Let's break down all the amazing features of Requestly:
⚡ Beautiful UX with a Chrome Extension so you can directly work in the browser. But there is also an option for a Native Mac experience as a desktop app. Both are always synced so you can work on either option and pick up on the other.
browser API client
desktop API client
⚡ You can organize APIs in Collections. Plus, you can import/export these API contracts and collections from various sources, including cURL, OpenAPI and Postman with just a single click.
import from anywhere
⚡ You can make different environments because some API values can change based on the environment you are working in and switching those values can be a hassle, environments make it easy to manage variables and their values locally.
It is easy to create using New and spot the environment you're currently working under as you can see from the below attached image.
⚡ A post-response script is a piece of code that runs automatically after an API request has been made. In Requestly, this post-response script can be used to manage environment variables dynamically such as:
-→ Setting environmental variables by capturing data from the response of an API request.
-→ Reusing these environment variables in subsequent requests, either as headers or query parameters.
For instance, you can write a script to set an environment variable based on the response from your API request.
// Assuming the response contains a JSON object with a token
const responseData = JSON.parse(response.body);
const token = responseData.token; // Extracting token from response
// Set the token as an environment variable
rq.environment.set('authToken', token);
In your next API request, you can reference that environment variable you just set by using ?token={{authToken}} as a query parameter or Authorization: Bearer {{authToken}} as a header.
You can read more on the official docs about Pre-request and Post-response scripts.
⚡ You also get API Requests history which is a local log of API calls that you have made over time, which might come in handy later on during API development.
⚡ Requestly is super helpful when you're working with a team, with your own workspace to improve collaboration. Different stuff like session recordings, mock servers, shared lists and more will be easily accessible to everyone on the team.
⚡ Requestly can directly import your Postman collections or environments files.
You can also copy the cURL of any request from the Network tab.
⚡ Requestly has an AI Assistant similar to Postbot known as RequestBot. It's like your personal dedicated support to make sure you're never stuck. As shown in the image, it will also list the source of the information so it's easier for you to explore yourself.
There are more exciting upcoming features such as:
✅ Collection Runners
✅ API Documentation
✅ API Collection Library
You can read more at the official docs and if you're curious to know more, you can read the official blog about Introducing Web-based API Client (Secure & Open Source).
2. Why Requestly API Client is a better alternative to Postman
⚡ As we learned earlier, Requestly is more secure since it doesn't proxy your API request through internal servers and also handles the problem of CORS more securely compared to other API clients. If you're curious about how Postman really works, I recommend reading Demystifying How Postman Web Works on the official blog.
⚡ Requestly supports API Mocking which is very essential for frontend developers and QA engineers. Once you develop APIs, other teams integrating these APIs in front-end and mobile apps need mocking, modifying API responses and bug-reporting features. Requestly provides this comprehensive suite of tools.
⚡ Many people on social have complained that Postman feels bloated. While on the other hand, Requestly is lightweight and has a very good user interface.
⚡ The major concern for teams is security and Requestly ensures top-tier security with SOC-II compliance, SSO integration and role-based access control.
⚡ Requestly has one of the best customer support with around 1000+ reviews and it's used by 10,000+ companies across the globe.
Here is a quick 3-minute overview of Requestly API Client!
After reading this, you can understand how Requestly is better than Postman as an API client for many reasons.
Let me know if you've any questions or feedback in the comments.
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