{"id":28293,"date":"2024-06-18T15:41:41","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T13:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/?p=28293"},"modified":"2024-06-18T15:42:09","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T13:42:09","slug":"bruno-vs-postman-the-final-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/backend\/bruno-vs-postman-the-final-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruno vs Postman: The Final Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bruno vs Postman<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bruno is an open-source API Client that has been gaining traction, challenging the highly popular Postman. This project aims to grow with community support<\/strong>, without third-party company involvement (except as sponsors) and has a strong desire to remain independent. They intend to maintain their identity, accepting external help without allowing any interference in project management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Choose Bruno<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For many, Postman is synonymous with reliability and familiarity. Despite some minor limitations (like only being able to modify requests through its interface), it has always met my needs<\/strong>. My collections have been there for ages, and the thought of reorganizing them elsewhere always gave me chills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everything was perfect until I needed to share my requests seriously with the team for effective collaboration. With the subscription costs and the frequent changes required for shared management of calls, my doubts grew daily.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Then Bruno arrived (the name reminds me of a movie). Its simple architecture immediately caught my attention, prompting me to import some of my Postman collections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I will summarize the points of contact (or friction) between the two competitors, analyzing them from both perspectives to declare the possible winner<\/strong> of this challenge. Let’s begin!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Configuration Storage<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While Postman saves collection and request configurations in its cloud, Bruno stores them on the local machine’s filesystem in “bru” files. This may seem trivial, but it significantly impacts collaboration, usability, and privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of usability, besides Bruno’s UI, we can directly modify the configuration files (the “.bru” files), which are simple text files. A great editor for editing Bru files is Visual Studio Code,<\/strong> with a “Bruno” extension for syntax highlighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruno doesn\u2019t have its own cloud (and according to their Manifest, likely never will), meaning the persistence of configurations is entirely user-managed. Therefore, with configuration files residing only on our machines, privacy is guaranteed. Sharing them is solely up to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaboration<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to Postman, which stores our configurations in its cloud, Bruno\u2019s request (and collection) definitions are local, represented by text files in Bru format. While in Postman, you can back up collections by exporting them; in Bruno, you can easily transform your filesystem structure into a Git (or SVN, or Mercurial) repository and push it to BitBucket, GitHub<\/a>, or GitLab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This implements team-level sharing! Postman requires purchasing licenses for teams larger than three users<\/strong> (with not-so-popular prices), while Bruno offers this capability for free, with no limits on what or with whom you share requests. Isn\u2019t that wonderful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online vs Offline<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I must admit, I never noticed this detail because I am always connected. However, it turns out Postman works only in online mode. It doesn’t start if it cannot contact its servers. Bruno, on the other hand, has no connection requirement since everything it needs resides on the local filesystem. This means you can make calls to your local environment even if you are isolated from the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using External Libraries<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using external libraries is standard for a developer and makes sense in this context. Both Postman and Bruno offer preloaded libraries covering most needs, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postman<\/th>Library<\/th>Bruno<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
\u2713<\/td>ajv<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>axios<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>node-fetch<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>atob<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>btoa<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>chai<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>lodash<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>moment<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>uuid<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>nanoid<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>crypto-js<\/td>\u2713<\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>cheerio<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>csv-parse<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>tv4<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>xml2js<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
\u2713<\/td>postman-collection<\/td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Postman isn’t designed to easily integrate external libraries into its ecosystem. The alternatives are either downloading the library via script from a CDN and evaluating the returned string or placing the library’s source code in a variable at the collection (or environment) level and invoking an anonymous function to access its methods. This process is somewhat complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Bruno, things are much simpler: create a package.json file with the libraries you want to include and put it in your project’s root directory. Then, install the dependencies with npm install<\/code>. The libraries are now available for use throughout your collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scripting<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Both Bruno and Postman allow customizing calls at different events:<\/p>\n\n\n\n