Engineering Craft › Developer Tooling
HTTP Client Tools
curl, HTTPie, Postman or Bruno for calling APIs by hand.
Also known as: Postman, Insomnia, HTTPie, Bruno, API client
When you work with APIs, you often want to send a request by hand and look at the response. Several tools do that, from the command line to visual apps.
| Tool | Style | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| curl | command line | quick checks, scripts, anywhere there’s a terminal |
| HTTPie | command line, friendlier syntax and colored output | readable one-off requests |
| Postman, Insomnia, Bruno | graphical apps | saving requests in collections, environments, auth helpers, team sharing |
| Editor extensions (REST Client for VS Code, JetBrains HTTP client) | plain .http files in your editor | requests that live in the repository next to the code |
| Browser DevTools | built in | replaying what the page sent (network tab) |
### Create an order
POST {{baseUrl}}/orders
Authorization: Bearer {{token}}
Content-Type: application/json
{ "item_id": 7, "quantity": 2 }What to look for in a tool
- Environments and variables for dev, staging and production, so you don’t edit URLs by hand.
- Saved collections that others can use.
- Auth support (bearer tokens, OAuth).
- Import from OpenAPI specs.
- Scripting and tests on responses, and running a collection in CI.
- Where data is stored: some tools sync collections to the cloud.
Habits
- Never commit real tokens or passwords in saved requests. Use environment variables and keep secrets out of shared collections (secrets in Git).
- Be careful with production. A saved
DELETErequest is one click from disaster. - Keep requests in version control where you can (text files, or exported collections).
- Use them to explore and debug, but write automated tests for anything important (API testing).
The best tool is the one your team will actually share and keep current.