Postman Tutorial

Postman is one of the most popular software testing tools which is used for API testing. With the help of this tool, developers can easily create, test, share, and document APIs.

This tutorial will help in understanding why Postman is so famous and what makes it unique when compared to other API testing tools. All the examples in this tutorial are tested and can be imported in Postman.

Introduction to Postman

• Postman is a standalone software testing API (Application Programming Interface) platform to build, test, design, modify, and document APIs. It is a simple Graphic User Interface for sending and viewing HTTP requests and responses.
• While using Postman, for testing purposes, one doesn't need to write any HTTP client network code. Instead, we build test suites called collections and let Postman interact with the API.
• In this tool, nearly any functionality that any developer may need is embedded. This tool has the ability to make various types of HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and convert the API to code for languages like JavaScript and Python.

Terminologies Related to Postman

API

Application Programming Interface (API) is software that acts as an intermediary for two apps to communicate with each other. We use APIs whenever we use an application like Twitter, Facebook, sending text messages, or checking the weather over the phone.

HTTP

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is the collection of rules for the transmission of data on the World Wide Web, like graphic images, text, video, sound, and other multimedia data. The Web users implicitly make use of HTTP as soon as they open their Web browser.

Example: A user or browser enters the HTTP request to the server; the server then returns the user response. This response includes the request status information and may consist of the requested material as well.

The most commonly used HTTP methods are GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, HEAD, DELETE, and OPTIONS.

Why use Postman?

Postman is based on a wide range of extremely user-friendly power tools. For more than 8 million users, Postman has become a tool of convenience. Following are the reasons why Postman is used:

1. Accessibility- One can use it anywhere after installing Postman into the device by simply logging in to the account.
2. Use Collections-Postman allows users to build collections for their API-calls. Every set can create multiple requests and subfolders. It will help to organize the test suites.
3. Test development- To test checkpoints, verification of successful HTTP response status shall be added to every API- calls.
4. Automation Testing-Tests can be performed in several repetitions or iterations by using the Collection Runner or Newman, which saves time for repeated tests.
5. Creating Environments- The design of multiple environments results in less replication of tests as one can use the same collection but for a different setting.
6. Debugging- To effectively debug the tests, the postman console helps to track what data is being retrieved.
7. Collaboration- You can import or export collections and environments to enhance the sharing of files. You may also use a direct connection to share the collections.
8. Continuous integration-It can support continuous integration.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic knowledge of API, automation, and manual testing.

Audience

This tutorial is created for those who would like to learn the basics of Postman. As the number of web and mobile applications is increasing, the importance of API testing is also growing. So this tutorial will help you to learn postman testing for testing APIs.

After completion of this tutorial, you will get a basic level of understanding of Postman and API testing. This tutorial will also give you a good understanding of how to use Postman to execute APIs for any given URL for your daily work.

Problems

We assure you that you will not find any difficulty while learning our Postman tutorial. But if there is any mistake in this tutorial, kindly post the problem or error in the contact form so that we can improve it.