Postman vs Socket.IO vs Swagger UI

Overview

Socket.IO

Stacks13.6K

Followers11.0K

Votes776

Postman

Stacks96.1K

Followers82.5K

Votes1.8K

Forks0

Swagger UI

Stacks2.1K

Followers1.8K

Votes207

GitHub Stars28.3K

Forks9.2K

Postman vs Socket.IO vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

Postman, Socket.IO, and Swagger UI are tools used in web development to simplify various aspects of the development process. Each tool serves a specific purpose and offers unique features that distinguish it from the others. In this article, we will explore the key differences between Postman, Socket.IO, and Swagger UI.

Postman: Postman is an API development and testing tool. It allows developers to send HTTP requests to a specific API endpoint and receive responses back. Postman provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to design, document, and test APIs. It also provides features for managing API collections, creating automated tests, and generating documentation. One key difference is that Postman primarily focuses on APIs and their endpoints.
Socket.IO: Socket.IO is a JavaScript library that enables real-time, bidirectional communication between the client and the server. It uses WebSockets as the underlying communication protocol and fallback options like long polling for environments where WebSocket connection is not supported. Socket.IO is particularly useful for applications that require real-time updates, such as chat applications, online gaming, or collaborative tools. Unlike Postman and Swagger UI, Socket.IO is primarily focused on enabling real-time communication between clients and servers.
Swagger UI: Swagger UI is a tool for visualizing and interacting with APIs based on the OpenAPI Specification (formerly known as Swagger). It automatically generates a user-friendly documentation interface that allows developers to explore and test the API endpoints. Swagger UI provides features like interactive API exploration, authentication support, request customization, response validation, and code generation. One key difference is that Swagger UI is specifically designed for visualizing and interacting with APIs based on the OpenAPI Specification.
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In summary, Postman is primarily focused on API development and testing, Socket.IO enables real-time bidirectional communication between clients and servers, while Swagger UI is used for visualizing and interacting with APIs based on the OpenAPI Specification.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Socket.IO, Postman, Swagger UI

Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

ExpressJS

React

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

1.15M views1.15M

Comments

Jagdeep

Tech Lead at Founder and Lightning

May 6, 2019

Reviewon

Postman

I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).

411k views411k

Comments

StackShare

May 1, 2019

Needs advice

From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"

382k views382k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Socket.IO	Postman	Swagger UI
It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.	It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.	Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation and sandbox from a Swagger-compliant API
Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.;Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.;Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.;Document collaboration - Allow users to concurrently edit a document and see each other's changes.	Compact layout;HTTP requests with file upload support;Formatted API responses for JSON and XML;Image previews;Request history;Basic Auth, OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, and other common auth helpers;Autocomplete for URL and header values;Key/value editors for adding parameters or header values. Works for URL parameters too.;Use environment variables to easily shift between settings. Great for testing production, staging or local setups.;Keyboard shortcuts to maximize your productivity;Automatically generated web documentation;Mock servers hosted on Postman’s cloud;API monitoring run from Postman cloud	The UI works in any development environment, be it locally or in the web;Allow end developers to effortlessly interact and try out every single operation your API exposes for easy consumption;Quickly find and work with resources and endpoints with neatly categorized documentation;Cater to every possible scenario with Swagger UI working in all major browsers
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 28.3K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 0	GitHub Forks 9.2K
Stacks 13.6K	Stacks 96.1K	Stacks 2.1K
Followers 11.0K	Followers 82.5K	Followers 1.8K
Votes 776	Votes 1.8K	Votes 207
Pros & Cons
Pros 219 Real-time 143 Node.js 141 Event-based communication 102 WebSockets 102 Open source Cons 12 Bad documentation 4 Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated 3 Doesn't work on React Native 2 Small community 2 Websocket Errors	Pros 490 Easy to use 369 Great tool 276 Makes developing rest api's easy peasy 156 Easy setup, looks good 144 The best api workflow out there Cons 10 Stores credentials in HTTP 9 Bloated features and UI 8 Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens 7 Poor GraphQL support 5 Expensive	Pros 49 Open Source 34 Can execute api calls from the documentation 29 Free to use 19 Customizable 14 Easy to implement in .Net Cons 3 Need to learn YAML and RAML 2 Documentation doesn't look that good 1 Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages 1 Does not support hypermedia 1 You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting
Integrations
Auth0 Gatsby Flutter React Backbone.js Cloud Firestore Outbrain	HipChat Keen Slack Dropbox Datadog PagerDuty Bigpanda Microsoft Teams Newman VictorOps	Node.js Git Microsoft Edge Safari Firefox Google Chrome

What are some alternatives to Socket.IO, Postman, Swagger UI?

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

Paw

Paw is a full-featured and beautifully designed Mac app that makes interaction with REST services delightful. Either you are an API maker or consumer, Paw helps you build HTTP requests, inspect the server's response and even generate client code.

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Apiary

It takes more than a simple HTML page to thrill your API users. The right tools take weeks of development. Weeks that apiary.io saves.

Ably

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Syncano

Syncano is a backend platform to build powerful real-time apps more efficiently. Integrate with any API, minimize boilerplate code and control your data - all from one place.

ReadMe.io

It is an easy-to-use tool to help you build out documentation! Each documentation site that you publish is a project where there is space for documentation, interactive API reference guides, a changelog, and much more.

Related Comparisons

Postman vs Socket.IO vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

Postman: Postman is an API development and testing tool. It allows developers to send HTTP requests to a specific API endpoint and receive responses back. Postman provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to design, document, and test APIs. It also provides features for managing API collections, creating automated tests, and generating documentation. One key difference is that Postman primarily focuses on APIs and their endpoints.
Socket.IO: Socket.IO is a JavaScript library that enables real-time, bidirectional communication between the client and the server. It uses WebSockets as the underlying communication protocol and fallback options like long polling for environments where WebSocket connection is not supported. Socket.IO is particularly useful for applications that require real-time updates, such as chat applications, online gaming, or collaborative tools. Unlike Postman and Swagger UI, Socket.IO is primarily focused on enabling real-time communication between clients and servers.
Swagger UI: Swagger UI is a tool for visualizing and interacting with APIs based on the OpenAPI Specification (formerly known as Swagger). It automatically generates a user-friendly documentation interface that allows developers to explore and test the API endpoints. Swagger UI provides features like interactive API exploration, authentication support, request customization, response validation, and code generation. One key difference is that Swagger UI is specifically designed for visualizing and interacting with APIs based on the OpenAPI Specification.
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Postman vs Socket.IO vs Swagger UI

Overview

Postman vs Socket.IO vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?