[Feature Request] Context menu to set environment variable

[Quelu]

• Insomnia Version: 7.0.3.3074
• Operating System: MacOS

Details

Hello, I don't know if this has already been asked (searched a bit in the issues but didn't found something related). It would be nice to have an option like in Postman to set an environnement variable value from a selected value in the response throught the contextual menu. Just like in this screen (Dev is the name of my current used environnement):

I'm using this in Postman when I'm getting a list of data and then doing an other request where I want to edit/view/use a given id as a parameter :)

I know I there is chaining request that could take data from the first request but this solution does not allow me to choose the item in the list of data that I want to use but only the first one. I should use a json path as $.data.items[0].id.

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[gschier]

Can you explain a bit more why chaining does not work for you? JSONPath is quite powerful so I may be able to help accomplish what you need if you provide a full example.

[Quelu]

Sure !

I have a request where I need to pass some parameters as variables into. Those parameters are the id of others elements that I got from other requests and that I choose from their response.

In other words, I have Request 1 that send me:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "3047bde6-b8fc-4e11-acaa-ea7011585104",
      ...
    },
    {
      "id": "3caffa68-fea7-4217-8704-0f29ff8af5ec",
      ...
    },
    ...
  ]
}

And I want to take the id of the second item (for this case, but I could need to take the third for an other one) in the list as a query parameter for Request 2.

So chaining might work but I would have to go in each request using the id of Request 1 to change the index of the item I want to use.

For now, I put manually my identifiers in the environnement variables by copy/pasting them but the shortcut from Postman is quite helpfull :)

Hope you understood what I'm trying to do ^^

[gschier]

Thanks for that info! It's super helpful 😄

[arturhun]

Being relatively new to Insomnia, I am not sure if I understand the above discussion correctly, but being able to specify a mapping between a response and an env variable would also be an interesting feature.

For example in the following sign-in example:

I would be happy if I could specify a permanent binding like so:

$.accessToken = myEnvAccessTokenVar

where myEnvAccessTokenVar variable would be used for nearly all requests as Bearer auth.

This way my token would be updated no-hands after every (successful) sign-in.

Placement

A new tab in the Response pane.

Disabling

Should you need to temporarily disable a mapping, there should be a way too, via:

• a checkbox
• refer to a non-existent property: $.---accessToken = myEnvAccessTokenVar
• add support for leading dot .$.accessToken = myEnvAccessTokenVar ?

Indication

• In the tab, square with the number of active mappings

• On folders/requests with at least one active mapping there could be a subtle graphic indicator. I mean here:

That's because as your api grows, the mappings could introduce hard to discover bugs around variables, so they should be easily spotted at the folder/request listing level.

[gschier]

@arturhun it sounds like your use case is well suited for Request Chaining?

[arturhun]

@gschier Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see a way to update a specific environment variable through that interface:

[gschier]

@arturhun you can't update one but you can use the Response tag inside an environment variable

[arturhun]

Yup, that worked perfectly (albeit hardly discoerable) Thank you :)

[Quelu]

Any update on this ? As the discussion drifted away a bit there was no answer to my initial question :)

[Quelu]

@gschier Any updates ? 😄 Tell me if you need more informations as the label is still in "Need more info"

[micaeldekleyn]

@gschier any updates ? I would be interested into this feature too.

[cbdelavenne]

Our team is also very interested in this specific feature.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[cbdelavenne]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

Really? I still think this is a valuable feature to have in Insomnia...

[kreosus]

Hi @Quelu Thank you for the suggested feature. It is not currently on our roadmap, but will be revisited at some point in the future.