Postman Tutorial#1- What is the Postman?
What is the Postman?
Postman is a powerful HTTP client for testing, developing, sharing, documenting and monitoring APIs by enabling users to collect HTTP requests.
It has a very useful and easy interface. This makes Postman different from its peers. The automation feature of Postman is one of the biggest reason for using it.
You can automate APIs. You can use ready-made code pieces and easily integrate with other tools(Jenkins, Travis, CI, Docker, Newman etc.).
You can code with JavaScript and Python in Postman. you can quickly adapt to Postman thanks to its easy syntax.
How to Download and Install?
- Go to “postman.com”
- Select operation system
- Click the marked button(Windows 64- bit)
- After the download is finished, the setup application is run
- Postman opens after a short install. In this area, there are options to create account and login with existing acoount
Note: If you want to perform the account transaction later, you can click the “Skip and go to app” button
Postman UI
Now, you can start using Postman. In this part, I will explain simple UI information.
1. Collection
Postman’s collection folders make it easy to keep your API requests and elements organized.
2. Request
Send HTTP requests
3. Environment
An environment is a set of variables you can use in your Postman requests
New: If you want to create HTTP Request, Enviroment, Collection etc. , you can use “New” button
Import: You can import a new Collection with the “Import” button
- On the left, you can see our Requests and Collections. We can see the history of our changes on the collections from the History tab.
How to create API request?
It is very important to log in with the account to customize Postman. I am passing this step because it is very easy to create account.
Note: You can create an account with “Create Free Account” on the login page.
1. Create Workspace
First step, we need to create a workspace. This step is crucial to stand out from other workspaces and share our test with our team.
You can create a Workspace with the marked places in the picture.
- First way; Click File > New and choose Workspace
- Second way; Click Workspace tab on the header
Note: Both paths you choose will open the same screen
You need to fill some fields on the screen of create.
- Name: It is the name we will see in the UI
- Summary: You can give some information about your workspace’s goal.
- Visibility: You need to choose who can see your workspace
When you fill required fields, you can click “Create Worspace” button. (The button will be clickable after filling the requried fields.)
We can see our workspace on the Workspace tab.
Now we created workspace and after this we do our process in this area.
2. Preparation for Request
We will send request and check response in this part. We need to URL for the send request and the URL need to return response. There are many website that use for this. I recommend you a website because it has simple UI and many options for request.
The website : https://reqres.in
When you scroll down, you will see tempaltes of request.
The field in the address bar shows our URL part. Endpoint request is the part that takes our URL to the point we want.
We will use “Get Single USer” for first example.
3. New Request on Postman
Now we will create an environment where we will send the request that we will send in the postman. We learned how to use the New field from the previous steps. We will create HTTP Request from the New section.
When we want to create a new HTTP Request, the following screen will meet us.
Before starting the process, it is useful to save this part with the Save button. We don’t want to lose our request.
When we click Send button, we need to fill some part of the screen.
Request Name: You can give a name what do you want.
Description: It’s optional. You can add summary for your request.
If you have noticed, the Save button is not clickable. And there is a warning like “You don’t have any collections.”
We need to create a collection. I gave short information about Collection. But the collections are very important and i will give more detail on next session.
We can create Collection with “New Collection” button at button left.
When we click “New Collection” button, we will write a name for the collection and click “Create” button.
We can click “Save” button after created collection.
You can see some places chanced. Because, now we are working our personalized area.
4. Send Request
Until this step, we have completed all the necessary steps to send a request. Now we only need the URL to send requests. And we can back the website about request template.
We will combine URL and endpoint. You can check title “2. Preapare for Request”.
Request URL: URL of Site + Endpoint for Single User
“https://reqres.in/api/users/2”
We will paste URL to marked place.
Now, everything is ready!
Click Send button and see the magic!
5. Check Response
We have a response. We don’t now this response is correct or not. Let’s check from the website.
When we chose Single User, it gave some information about the response. For example, id, email, first_name etc.
Actually, logic is simple. We have some information about response before sending. We want to check, they are correct or incorrect. We use Postman for this. When we send request, we can compare informations of response. And we can automatized.( this is the main part)
Response from Postman:
You can compare manually for now. Next session we will learn more detail about request and response.
We will examine important part of Request and Response. What are theese ? When we use thesee?
I hope, I was able to help you up to this point. See you next session!
