So, hereβs how Hoppscotch happened.
You know the drill. Youβre developing an app for a client and you need to test every API and every APIs response in every method, on every request.
Our team was already using Postman to test all the variations of an API, but my 7-year-old PC couldn't afford to run another Electron app just to see the request responses in all of them. And thatβs how it all started.
How about making a tool where you can test your APIs from your browser itself without switching between apps as you work? That would be neat, huh!
How it all began
The initial tweet about the idea got 250+ likes and 60+ retweets so people were definitely interested in this kind of tool.
I literally launched Hoppscotch on a dev.to article and wrote about it on Hacker News, HackerNoon, Medium, HashNode, Reddit, Twitter, etc.
I saw a guy writing JavaScript today.
No frameworks.
No libraries.
No problems.
He just did it.
Writing JavaScript.
Like a Psychopath.
It was me π
I had some problems with CORS in deployment, but I found a quick workaround. I used Vue.js and apparently migrated to Nuxt.js.
At that point, I started thinking that the tool can actually be published as a standalone web app, and the WebSocket testing feature can just be an addition. So I shifted my goal and started working towards that.
I added a few themes, polished up the UI a bit, struggled for 30 mins to come up with a name, and..... drumroll Hoppscotch it is. I set up a GitHub repo for people who were interested to contribute.
After I open-sourced the code, polished up the UI, and finished a bunch of other smaller things, hoppscotch.io was live π
I actually wrapped up work at 4:30 AM because I just couldnβt go to sleep without finishing that one thing π
Features
π Open Source
π₯ Runs online
π Multi-platform & multi-device support
π± Progressive Web App
π WebSocket testing
π‘ Server-Sent Events testing
π© Socket.IO testing
π¦ MQTT testing
π« GraphQL testing
π Customizations
β° History
π Collections
π Proxy
π Pre-Request Scripts & environment variables Ξ²
π³ Docker
β³ Keyboard Shortcuts
β
Post-Request Tests Ξ²
After the launch, analytics were going crazy! Got 17,700+ stars on GitHub, made it to GitHub Trending a couple of times, became #2 product of the day on Product Hunt, got featured in Indie Hackers, Hacker News, Hacker noon, BetaList, YouTube & open source dev podcast, etc.
Apart from the project development, there were other goodies that happened since the initial release:
Got first financial backer on Open Collective
Released badges Ξ²
Hoppscotch's icon got featured in simpleicons.org
Created Telegram public community
Started Discord server
Caneco made a new banner
I was solving my own problem with the hope that I'll also gonna solve other peopleβs problems. The most important thing is that in the end, you get a lot of amazing and positive feedback, which is basically the only thing that drives you to do better and more awesome work! π