I need an application to quickly load up a set of URLs during testing and development a web application

Question

When I'm developing for web application, I have a set of 4-10 different URLs that I manually check that reflect different states of the data on any given page. I could bookmark these pages (which works fine when on localhost), but when navigating to those pages on the test server, the URL isn't static. A version number gets appended to the URL. That means having to manually paste the version number into the URL for every page every time there's a version change (which can be pretty frequent).

When I'm manually testing and verifying my API data, I use Paw's feature to set environment variables to dynamically build the url with the version number. I only have to set this once for all my requests, which is extremely useful.

I'm basically looking for an application that is similar to what Paw does for API development and testing, but for browser development and testing. Especially the feature where the urls can be built dynamically with custom variables.

I can't do anything that would be a subscription service unless it's free. A one-time application purchase for less than $75 max would be okay. If there is some kind of browser extension that would accomplish this, I normally use Chrome.

Thanks!

Answer 1

https://www.getpostman.com/

There is a bit of a learning curve, but Postman is great and you could do the stuff you want for free. I use it every day to test urls and api end points.

You can use variables in the url or in headers. You can have different sets of variables for different environments. You can do it really simply, or create tests to check for specific outcomes with each request. (Like specific text appearing on a dynamically generated page).

It is mostly used in API development, but it is helpful with simple urls as well.