The environment variables (references) imported from Insomnia do not take effect in Bruno

[Umizhang0910]

Hi, hello! I have encountered this problem and need to answer it. Thank you.

In Insomnia, for example: {{_. varName}}), referencing other environment variables and importing them did not resolve properly into usable and valid environment variables.

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[Umizhang0910]

I still couldn't reference the variable by removing the '_.' before it, until I finally removed the spaces before and after the variable name. I actually use environment variables a lot, and it's quite troublesome to process them one by one. I hope it can be optimized.

[muhammadmobi]

Bruno's Insomnia importer converts {{ _.var }} in requests, but not in environment values, so those arrive unchanged. The quickest fix for a lot of variables is to fix the export file once and import it again.

Fix: rewrite the references in the Insomnia export, then re-import

Open the exported file (JSON or YAML) in VS Code, press Ctrl+H, turn on regex (.*), and run Replace All with:

• Find: \{\{\s*(?:_\.)?\s*([\w.-]+)\s*\}\}
• Replace: {{$1}}

That turns {{ _.baseUrl }}, {{_.baseUrl}} and {{ baseUrl }} into {{baseUrl}}. Nested Insomnia values such as {{ _.api.host }} become {{api.host}}, which matches the key Bruno creates when it flattens nested environments. Then remove the collection you imported earlier and import the edited file.

If you want to keep the collection you already have, run the same replace with Find in Files (Ctrl+Shift+H), limited to the collection's environments folder. Bruno watches that folder and picks up the changes.

Why it happens: the importer has a normalizeVariables() helper that strips _. and the spaces (insomnia-to-bruno.js#L36-L43). It's used for URLs, headers, params, bodies and auth. Environment variables are copied as-is with String(value) (env-utils.js#L15), so {{ _.x }} reaches Bruno unchanged. It's a small gap and worth an issue. The fix would be to run the same normalization in toBrunoEnv.

[Umizhang0910]

Thanks, i see. Have you considered performing special processing during the import conversion process and directly converting it into environment variables that Bruno can recognize?

[muhammadmobi]

Yes, that's the right long-term fix, but it's a change in Bruno itself. The importer already has the conversion in normalizeVariables() (insomnia-to-bruno.js#L36-L43). It just isn't applied to environments: toBrunoEnv copies each value with String(value) (env-utils.js#L15). Moving that helper somewhere shared and running environment values through it would cover {{ _.x }} in environments too.

That code is the same in v4.2.1, and I couldn't find an existing issue or PR for it, so it's worth opening an issue with these two links (or a PR, since the change is small). Until it ships, the find-and-replace on the export file is the workaround.

[Umizhang0910]

Thanks for your reply. I've implemented the fix based on your analysis — see the PR: #9583

[helloanoop]

Hey @Umizhang0910

Can you confirm that you tested the PR changes on your machine, and your issue was resolved. Just wanted to ensure that the changes were only related to the space trimming.

[Umizhang0910]

Hey @helloanoop , I've already done end-to-end verification locally on my machine, and it passed — it resolved my issue. See below: