Insomnia
Kong •
Since 2016
Quick Actions
Official Docs
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia is a powerful REST and GraphQL API client that competes with Postman in the API development space. Now owned by Kong, Insomnia focuses on simplicity and developer experience. The user agent appears when developers use Insomnia for API testing, debugging, and development. Known for its clean interface and powerful features, Insomnia is particularly popular among developers who prefer open-source tools. The tool supports advanced features like environment variables, code generation, and response visualization.
User Agent String
insomnia/2023.5.8
How to Control Insomnia
Block Completely
To prevent Insomnia from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Insomnia
User-agent: insomnia
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: insomnia
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: insomnia
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Insomnia
Verification Method:
Insomnia user agent with version
Insomnia user agent with version
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Insomnia in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Insomnia/i
Strict Pattern
/^insomnia/2023\.5\.8$/
Flexible Pattern
/Insomnia[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Kong.*Insomnia/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Insomnia
function detect_insomnia() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Insomnia/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Insomnia detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Insomnia
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_insomnia():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Insomnia'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class InsomniaMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Insomnia
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect Insomnia
function detectInsomnia(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Insomnia/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Insomnia detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Insomnia';
}
next();
}
app.use(detectInsomnia);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Insomnia
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Insomnia [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Insomnia [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Insomnia" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Insomnia/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Insomnia
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_insomnia {
default 0;
~*Insomnia 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_insomnia) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_insomnia) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_insomnia) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: insomnia
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: insomnia
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: insomnia
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Insomnia
Robots.txt Name
insomnia
Category
other
Respects robots.txt
May not respect
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