Postman uses http_proxy by default if proxy is disabled in settings + does not parse it correctly

[mponton]

App Details:

Postman for Windows
Version 5.3.1
win32 6.1.7601 / x64

Issue Report:

1. Did you encounter this recently, or has this bug always been there:
   It has always been there since I started using Postman App about 1-2 months ago.

2. Expected behaviour:
   When Proxy is disabled in the settings (global and system), proxy should not be used.

3. Console logs:
   Error: tunneling socket could not be established, cause=getaddrinfo ENOENT 10080:80

4. Screenshots (if applicable)
   Not worth it. See above line.

I traced the above issue that prevented Postman to work to my http_proxy environment variable.

So the issue is twofold:

1. I could not find any documentation whatsoever that Postman will use the http_proxy environment variable if set. I guess, it could be argued that I should expect that, but still, I think it should be made clear in the settings that if disabled here, the http_proxy environment variable will be picked up.

2. My http_proxy was set to http_proxy=localhost:10080 which works with everything else (git, pip, etc...) but Postman does not parse it correctly. I think it splits on :, picks up the second part as the host and if the third part is not present, it use the default port 80, thus resulting in 10080:80.

If set to http_proxy=http://localhost:10080 it will be picked up correctly.

Now that I figured the issue out, it's easy to work around it. But I lost plenty of time troubleshooting this because the only symptom I had before I finally opened the console was this:

Could not get any response

There was an error connecting to https://hostname/path/to/some/api.

Why this might have happened:

The server couldn't send a response: Ensure that the backend is working properly
Self-signed SSL certificates are being blocked: Fix this by turning off 'SSL certificate verification' in Settings > General
Client certificates are required for this server: Fix this by adding client certificates in Settings > Certificates
Proxy configured incorrectly Ensure that proxy is configured correctly in Settings > Proxy
Request timeout: Change request timeout in Settings > General

Now that I'm done complaining...

Thanks for the great tool!

Cheers!

[prashantagarwal]

@mponton Thanks for opening this issue. Have you found a workaround for your issue or is there anything that you expected to be available in the Postman app itself.

[mponton]

Yes, the workaround for me is pretty simple, unset the http_proxy environnement variable. However I think the fact that it is used should be documented and also, the simple hostname:port format should be parsed correctly if you guys want to keep using it.