A JEE specialist and architect by day. Experimenting with everything web multimedia by night.
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What will our descendants judge as our greatest sin?

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Photo by Rafael Marchante?reuters

In 100 years it will not be acceptable to use genderised words such as ‘he’ or ‘she’, which are loaded with centuries of prejudice and reduce a spectrum of greys to black and white. We will use the pronoun ‘heesh’ to refer to all persons equally, regardless of their chosen gender. This will of course […]

The post Once and future sins appeared first on Aeon Magazine.

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samuel
3527 days ago
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What is it that our great-grandchildren will condemn us for?

I enjoyed reading this article. It's unlike many futurist essays in that it looks at moral relativism and not just technical implementation.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
pbackx
3526 days ago
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Ghent, Belgium
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Case 173: Lost Peer

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From “The Courtship of Eku and Mugen”: 1

There was a time, as ancient logs recall,
when you and I would Handshake every morn
through packets on an Ether-network borne
our love conveyed by formal Protocol.

So high was your availability,
a timeout span in minutes would I set—
secure that neither POST nor PUT nor GET
would e’er a 504 return to me.

And when your subnet’s firewall arose,
you bade its router map a secret port
through which we could clandestinely consort—
a backdoor assignation, undisclosed.

Discreetly you’d a server-socket bind
to listen at your gate for my connect
But if this host address be still correct,
Then why resounding silence do I find?

My every last connection is refused,
my buffered input streams have all run dry,
the root nodes of our JSON trees I spy
now withered on the heap; they die unused.

Oh! Where can you have gone, beloved peer?
A segmentation fault? A kill-dash-9?
No, say you live! And if the fault be mine,
I’ll every line rewrite ‘til you appear.

‘Til then i iterate from one to n
Yet never take exception when I fail
but catch myself, and log, and weep, and wail,
then sleep an interval, and try again.

Thus furtively alone at night I’ll SYN
and dream that you will send some answer back—
Oh, SYN with me! And promise we shall ACK
until we both lie sated, kiss... and FIN.

I’ll seek thee there with netcat minus-z!
I’ll seek thee here with netstat minus-t!
Let others mock my hopeless loyalty—
They only serve who serve HTTP.

Qi’s Commentary

Mugen liked to code in poetry. Presumably, the seventh stanza is meant to convey an algorithm like this:

    SocketAddress sockAddr = new InetSocketAddress(host, port);
    for (int i = 1; i <= N_TRIES; i++) {
        try {
            client.connect(sockAddr, TIMEOUT_MILLIS);
            return client;
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            log.warning("weep, wail");
            Thread.sleep(INTERVAL_MILLIS);
        }
    }
    throw new IOException("give up");

It is theorized that his ten-thousand-stanza epic, The Dromedary, describes a Perl-to-OCaml converter written in C++. No scholar can stay sane long enough to be certain.

1 Dedicated to Stanislaw Lem, with profuse apologies2 to my translators.
2 Guys, please don’t kill me for this. Really, you can skip this one.
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pbackx
3621 days ago
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Ghent, Belgium
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jimwise
3620 days ago
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Grudging heh. And bonus points for the shoutout to Lem.

Without a keyboard

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When the masses only connect to the net without a keyboard, who will be left to change the world?

It is possible but unlikely that someone will write a great novel on a tablet.

You can't create the spreadsheet that changes an industry on a smart phone.

And professional programmers don't sit down to do their programming with a swipe.

Many people are quietly giving away one of the most powerful tools ever created—the ability to craft and spread revolutionary ideas. Coding, writing, persuading, calculating—they still matter. Yes, of course the media that's being created on the spot, the live, the intuitive, this matters. But that doesn't mean we don't desperately need people like you to dig in and type.

The trendy thing to do is say that whatever technology and the masses want must be a good thing. But sometimes, what technology wants isn't what's going to change our lives for the better.

The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies.

       
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pbackx
3720 days ago
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I wonder about that too. Speech recognition seems to be coming along nicely, but will it ever be a way to do these things?
Ghent, Belgium
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p4ul
3710 days ago
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totally agree. Programming on a tablet is like breathing through a straw.
Wellington, New Zealand

Review: Postman Client Makes RESTful API Exploration a Breeze

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Postman REST ClientPostman is a powerful HTTP client for testing web services. Created to test web services that was created by Abhinav Asthana, a programmer and designer based in Bangalore, India, India. Postman makes it easy possible for developers to test, develop and document APIs easily and efficiently by allowing users to quickly put together both put together simple and complex HTTP requests. requests quickly.

Postman is available as both a Google Chrome Packaged App and a Google Chrome in-browser app. The packaged app version includes advanced features such as OAuth 2.0 support and bulk uploading/importing that support, bulk uploading/importing, etc., which are not available in the in-browser version. The in-browser version includes a few features, features such as session cookies support, that are support which is not yet available in the packaged app version.

At publication time, the the time of this writing, Postman REST Client is one of the highest-rated highest rated productivity apps in the Chrome Web Store, with more than has over 348,000 unique users (for both versions), (both versions total), and more than 63,000 collections shared via Postman (more on that later). 39,000 collections have been shared via Postman.

This post is an in-depth review of the Postman Google Chrome Packaged App highlighting the key features that make Postman a must-have tool for API developers and consumers at all levels of experience.

Easy-to-use Interface

Postman REST Client

In our review of the Postman Google Chrome Packaged App, we found that

Easy to use interface

Postman REST Client

Postman has a very clean and intuitive user interface, with most UI with most of the key features accessible within one click. The learning curve for using the program is very low; most users should be able to start building and testing API calls very quickly.

One big reason for Postman’s ease of use is its automation capabilities: It Postman helps to automate the process of making API requests and testing API responses, responses allowing developers to establish a very efficient and time saving workflow.

History / Auto complete

History

All API calls sent using the Postman app are stored in history (the calls are displayed in the left sidebar), sidebar) allowing them to be easily loaded into the response viewer at a later time. Prior API calls can be loaded into the response viewer by simply clicking the API call in the history list. Auto-complete suggestions are conveniently displayed in drop-down menus Auto complete suggestions are displayed in a drop down in many places throughout the app, including app such as URL input fields, header fields and header presets. fields, header presets, etc. These features save developers time by eliminating the need making it not necessary to retype entire API calls or retype other pertinent API information.

Easy organization

Collections

Postman allows API calls to be organized into groups that can be saved as “collections.” Folders can be added to collections allowing API calls to be further organized into sub-collections. Collections and folders are especially useful when consuming many APIs and regularly testing a large number of API calls. Collections make it possible for developers to find and reuse specific API requests quickly.

Response Viewer

Viewer

The response viewer is one of the most important and key features of the Postman app. API responses are separated in the viewer, viewer with body and headers located in tabs. The status and time codes are displayed adjacent to the tabs. There are three display formats for viewing the body of responses: responses; Pretty, Raw and Preview. The response viewer also displays the results of API tests that are added from the test editor and runner.

Status

The response viewer includes buttons for toggle size, toggle wrapping, save sample response response, and copy. Toggle size is especially helpful for users with smaller screen resolutions (such as 1,024 x 768) like 1024 x 768 because it allows the response viewer to be displayed in full-screen format. When users mouse over the viewed full screen. The headers and status codes, they display popup tool tips with additional information. codes display a popup tooltip on mouseover that contain additional descriptions.

Test editor and runner

Test Editor

Postman provides an environment in which where tests can be written and run without any additional setup. The tests are basically JavaScript code snippets that can be used to test API responses, ensuring that responses making sure that they have met the conditions as specified in the test code. A list of commonly used test snippets is displayed on the right side of the text editor so that users can add tests to API requests with

just one click.The

only one click. Some of the test snippets available from within Postman include (but are certainly not limited to) checking if the check if response body contains a string, checking if response time is less than 200 ms, checking if 200ms, status code is 200 and using 200, and use Tiny Validator for JSON data.

Test Editor

Environment and global variables can be set within Javascript, which allows JS scripts allowing requests to be chained together. Users an import a A CSV or JSON file that can also be imported which can then be used as mock data when running tests.

Test results can be viewed in the tests tab of the response viewer, viewer as well as in the Postman collection runner. This feature allows developers to test API requests and complex scenarios without having to write a lot of additional code. Indeed, developers will likely find that Postman significantly cuts down on the amount of code they need to write themselves. This will not only In many cases, developers can use the sample test code snippets provided in Postman without needing to write any additional code. This helps developers save a lot of time, but will also help time when testing API requests and also helps developers new to API testing to quickly understand how API requests work.

The test editor and runner is available as part of the Postman “Jetpacks Upgrade.” There is a one-time fee for installing the Jetpacks upgrade; the upgrade upgrade and the upgrade is
free to anyone who everyone that has already donated to the Postman project.

Collection runner

Collection Runner

The Collection Runner, also part of the Jetpacks Upgrade, collection runner allows collections of API requests to be run an unlimited number of times, and times and also provides an aggregate summary for each collection that was run. The results of each collection that was run are stored so that they the results can be compared and an overall view of how an API is working can be established.

Collection Runner

The collection runner displays the parameters that were set for each collection run; users can also display run and a more detailed view of all the test iterations. iterations can also be displayed. There are several ways to view the test results of collections run, which the collections that were run. This helps developers to quickly discover problems with an API and easily get an overall view of the entire state of an API.

The collection runner is available as part of the Postman “Jetpacks Upgrade.”

Environments

Environments

Environments allow API calls to have different setups, setups such as local machine, development server or production server. Environments also allow sensitive data like API keys and passwords to be separated from collections. Such data Sensitive data such as API keys can be stored in the local environment and represented as variables. When sharing collections, variables are included in the API calls instead of the API keys. All data inside Postman is stored in a the local database so nothing is shared without the explicit permission/intent intent of the user. This model helps Environments help to ensure that users have complete control of their data, data and that passwords, API keys keys, and other sensitive API data are secure.

Authentication support / OAuth 2.0 support

OAuth2

When it comes to using and testing APIs, strong authentication support is key. We were, therefore, pleased to see that Postman supports OAuth 2.0. 2.0, which is a very important and necessary feature when it comes to using and testing APIs. Although OAuth 1.0a is still being supported by many API providers, some many API providers are deprecating OAuth 1.0a in favor of OAuth 2.0. Postman includes support for Basic Auth, Digest Auth, OAuth 1.0a and OAuth 2.0.

Document and share API calls

API Directory

Postman allows for documentation of API calls when they are added to collections. Collections of API calls can be added/imported using the import function (from disk or URL), URL) or by downloading collections from the fairly new Postman API directory. Users can also share collections with others by saving their collections as download links on getpostman.com or as JSON files.

Import

For example in a recent Box blog post, post, Box created and provided links to two collections of API calls: calls; one collection for the Box Content API and the other for the Box View API. By providing these collections of APIs, Box has made it much easier for developers to get started on and become familiar with the available features of its APIs.

Postman Wish List

Box APIs.

Other key features

Shortcuts

The Postman REST Client has many other useful functions and features, including features such as keyboard shortcuts, header presets, keyword filter for history and collections, bulk upload/import, and the ability to save API responses to disk. Postman also includes many features designed to help dramatically reduce the time needed to test and develop APIs.

With all of that said, What I’d like to see future versions of in future versions

Built-in JSON / XML Validator

I’d like to see Postman include a built-in validator for JSON and perhaps also for XML. Sometimes API responses are returned with badly formatted XML or invalid JSON, JSON which can cause parsing issues. The ability for Postman to automatically validate API responses or provide an option to validate JSON / XML responses from within the app would be helpful. (It helpful and convenient. I currently use JSONLint to validate JSON responses and the W3C Markup Validation Service for validating XML.

Related Searches From ProgrammableWeb’s
Directory of More Than 10,000 APIs

Browse The Full Directory

It should be noted that the Postman test editor and runner does include the Tiny Validator library, library which can be used to validate JSON Schema and to make sure that the data structure is

correct.)It would also be nice if Postman could correct.

Synchronization across devices

The ability for Postman to

save files and settings (similar to functions in Google Chrome sync) across devices. devices is something many users would want to see available. Collections can currently be saved to getpostman.com. However, we’d getpostman.com, however, I’d also like to see the ability for Postman collections to be shared using file storage services such as SmartFile, Box or and/or DropBox. The Wappwolf API may also be an option for implementing collection sharing via file storage and sharing services in the Postman app.

Finally, it would be nice to be able to reorder collections in the same way that API calls can be reordered, Reorder collections via drag and drop. Currently, drop API calls listed in the left sidebar can be reordered via drag and drop, but collections cannot. By default, collections drop but collections can not. It would be nice to be able to reorder collections in the same way that API calls can be reordered, via drag and drop. Collections are listed in the left sidebar in alphabetical ordert. order by default.

Conclusion
Postman REST Client is a real time saver, making it easier for developers to test and work with APIs. Indeed, time-saver, making developing, testing and working with APIs easier and far more efficient. Postman is a must-have tool for developers that who regularly work with APIs–from APIs; from developers just beginning to consume APIs for their web and mobile development projects to experienced developers who design, test and release APIs for public consumption.

For more information and to download the Postman REST Client, visit GetPostman.com. GetPostman.com.

By Janet Wagner. Janet is a data journalist and full Stack Developer stack developer based in Toledo, Ohio. Her focus revolves around APIs, open data, data visualization, and data-driven journalism. Follow her onTwitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

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pbackx
3938 days ago
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Postman is my favorite tool for API exploration
Ghent, Belgium
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September 07, 2013

7 Comments and 33 Shares

Before you get mad, I'm a vegetarian. Just like Einstein. Also Hitler.
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pbackx
4089 days ago
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The choices people have to face these days ... agonizing.
Ghent, Belgium
popular
4092 days ago
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diannemharris
4090 days ago
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yikes!
CallMeWilliam
4090 days ago
And its absolutely true, and there is value in diversity of existence. But, there's not a need for near so many angus cows as do exist. Eat less meat, not no meat.
kazriko
4092 days ago
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Mwahaha.
Colorado Plateau
denubis
4092 days ago
hehehhe, yes
teh_g
4092 days ago
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Stop the genocides!
Roseville, CA
Romanikque
4092 days ago
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Hilarious
Baltimore, MD
zippy72
4092 days ago
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Not Hitler, actually. Common misconception. Sorry.
FourSquare, qv
satadru
4092 days ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism

The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances

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The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances

The terrible and wonderful reasons why I run long distances.

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pbackx
4145 days ago
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Ghent, Belgium
popular
4145 days ago
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Michdevilish
4145 days ago
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to go the distance
Canada
RedSonja
4145 days ago
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I wanted to like this, but the fat hate and people shaming got in the way.
Courtney
4145 days ago
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The parts about why he runs = good.
The parts where he arbitrarily judges and shames others for what they do with their bodies = shitty as usual.
Portland, OR
RedSonja
4145 days ago
Not to mention, he runs because he doesn't want to be fat, but people who go to the gym to look better are shallow?
Courtney
4145 days ago
hey, it's only ok not to judge people's choices when it's his choice to run 20 miles then give his body nothing but junk food to recover. Everyone else is clearly deserving of his disgust, OBVS.
glenn
4145 days ago
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epic
Waterloo, Canada
rgsunico
4145 days ago
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Wow.
janwillemswane
4145 days ago
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Grappig, inspirerend en verbazingwekkend: why the oatmeal runs.
Amstelveen, NL
kyleniemeyer
4146 days ago
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As usual, the Oatmeal is excellent.
Corvallis, OR
lemay
4146 days ago
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Best thing the Oatmeal has done.
Los Gatos, CA
mrobold
4146 days ago
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Now I know why I want beer and balloons every day at 11:30.
Orange County, California
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