A Great Alternative to Postman: Introduction to HTTPie Desktop

Introduction

As a Python developer, you’re probably very familiar with the CLI tool httpie — an excellent HTTP API debugging tool built with Python. Here’s how it works:

Last year, httpie also had a notable incident — their high-star GitHub project lost 54k stars. 😂😂😂

But today’s star isn’t the httpie CLI. Instead… it was around last year when httpie released its desktop version, and this year they added a powerful API-based prompt feature. I think it’s time to recommend it to everyone.

httpie desktop

httpie desktop has all the user-friendliness of the CLI version, plus a beautiful graphical interface.

Key Features:

• Interact with APIs painlessly
• Harness the power of AI-assisted workflows
• Organize your work in Spaces, Collections, and Tabs (these are httpie’s concepts for organizing APIs)
• Parameterize requests with Variables and Environments
• Work across devices with auto-save and real-time sync
• Build and preview requests without sending them
• Use the app offline without an account

Beautiful Interface

Below is the httpie desktop interface — clean and practical, divided into the following sections:

• Sidebar (user management/settings, etc.)
• Left panel (organize APIs via Collection/Space)
• Upper-left tabs — individual API requests
• Below the tabs — API Method and URL
• Below the URL on the left — Request panel, including:
  • Params
  • Headers
  • Auth
  • Body
• Below the URL on the right — Request and response results
  • At the bottom, you can select the body format (HTML/JSON/XML…) and filter/download, etc.

It also features dark mode, JSON formatting/beautification, different colors for different methods, variable highlighting… Perfect~

AI Assistance

httpie’s AI feature is truly practical, as shown below:

You can describe what you need in plain language and have httpie automatically generate the corresponding API details.

For example, in the URL input field, I entered the prompt: “create a grafana dashboard”, and the generated API looks like this:

It directly constructs the API’s:

• Method
• URL
• Body
• …

information. Extremely practical. 👍👍👍

Parameterize Requests with Variables and Environments

You can define Variables within a Space, and the same Variable can have different values depending on the Environment — very practical. 👍👍👍 Here’s what it looks like:

To use a variable, reference it with , like this:

Real-time Sync

Currently httpie is in beta, and you can create an account (e.g., using your GitHub account) to sync all your API data in real time. Another very practical feature.

Other Useful Features

httpie also covers essentially all the features Postman offers — nothing is missing.

Organization — Space and Collection

Spaces let you define Space-level Variables, Environments, and global settings.

Collections let you define Collection-level common configurations, such as Auth.

APIs can seamlessly inherit all of the above configurations.

API Body Supports Multiple Formats

• None
• Text
  • Raw
  • JSON
  • YAML
  • XML
• Form
• File
• GraphQL

Body Beautification

One-click beautification, as shown below:

API Preview

You can preview APIs with support for a wide range of formats, such as wget, curl, libraries in various programming languages, and more.

Operations on Responses

You can also perform operations on responses, such as: filter/copy/download/search…

Summary

HTTPie Desktop is a Postman competitor released last year — a desktop application for API debugging. I highly recommend everyone give it a try. It offers the following standout features:

• Beautiful interface
  • Dark mode
  • Rich color display
  • JSON beautification and more
• AI-assisted prompts
• Real-time sync
• API organization via hierarchy and tags
• Variables and Environments support
• Rich API Body support
  • GraphQL support
• API Preview
• API Response Filter/Copy/Download/Search…

Go ahead and try it out — I guarantee you’ll be impressed~ 😉😉😉