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We can obtain the cURL command equivalent by following the below steps:

• CLICK on the Code icon as shown below:

• You will get the cURL command of the REST API request sent as shown in the screenshot below:

• We can also get the command for the request in different languages like C#, Javascript, NodeJs, PHP, etc by selecting the OPTION that we require from the drop-down as shown in the image below:

Postman has become the most popular and beloved tool for API testing. Hence, hands-on EXPERIENCE with the Postman tool has become very important for any BACKEND developer.

Recommended Resources:

API Testing

REST API

Software Testing

Web Services

Scratch Pad is a space provided by Postman that helps us to work without being connected to Postman servers. It provides the flexibility of utilizing some of the features of postman offline. The features include- COLLECTION creation, creating requests and the ability to send requests. These are stored LOCALLY and once LOGGED in, the work is SAVED into the workspace.

Suppose you want to generate numbers between the range 1 to N, then it can be DONE in the pre-request script as FOLLOWS:

We can then use this VARIABLE in the URL as:{{randomNumber}}

Postman provides a command-line tool CALLED Newman using which we can run any Postman collection. It is a NodeJS based package that requires a node environment for executing collections using Newman Collection Runner. It has full parity with Postman’s Collection Runner i.E it provides support for RUNNING assertions, pre-request scripts, or other request scripts LINKED with the REQUESTS that belong to the collection.

We can use Newman by following the below steps:

• Install Node
• Install Newman package using npm command as: npm install -g newman
• To run the collection, first export the environment to JSON format in Postman. Then run the below command for running the collection in Newman:

In such cases, the HIGHER PRECEDENCE is given to the LOCAL variable by OVERWRITING the value of the global variable.

Postman provides a lot of built-in tools and libraries that we can USE to add in our pre-request or POST-request scripts or test CASES. Let us take the example of using the moment.js library. It provides a lot of useful functions to format data around time. Consider that we have a POST request that needs to specify the created date to the user which expects the format “DD/MM/YYYY”. We can use the moment library to perform this using a single line of code. In our pre-request script, we need to add the below lines of code to get the correctly formatted data and then store that in an environment variable:

There are a lot of other useful libraries LIKE crypto.js that are useful for converting text to encrypted values which can further be used ANYWHERE in the request body.

Pre-REQUEST scripts are those scripts that are used for executing Javascript code before a request is run. It is used for performing pre-processing tasks like setting variables, PARAMETERS, HEADERS, body DATA, etc.

We can use the below code to stop the EXECUTION of the next REQUEST: pm.setNextRequest(NULL);

Postman does allow VIEWING of requests and response parameters in the software application itself. But it is important to see how the request was sent upon applying the pre-request scripts. In such cases, Postman has an additional tool called “Postman Console” which is used for viewing EVERY request and response DETAIL. We can also log the DETAILS in the console by USING console.log statements in the scripts.

Workspaces are the areas/space given by Postman for team collaboration to work on a specific or SET of collections. It provides a way to logically separate requests or collections that are personal to the developer or the team so that the maintenance of requests is made easy.

There are two types of workspaces in Postman:

• Personal Workspace:
  • These workspaces are useful when we are working simultaneously on multiple projects and we require logical separation between the requests to handle the requests better.
• Team Workspace:
  • These are created for team collaboration so that more than one person can be part of testing requests.
  • We can invite new USERS for collaborating on our collections by sharing the email ID of the users. Once the invite is accepted, the new users can START contributing to the workspace by adding or modifying the requests.

We can create a new workspace by clicking on the Workspace icon and then clicking on “Create New”.

We can select our workspace to be personal or team workspace by configuring the properties in the create window.

Postman COLLECTIONS allow using pre-request scripts at the individual request level and the collection level. We can add any SCRIPT that applies to all requests in the collection in the pre-request scripts. We can do it by following the below steps:

• Right-click on the collection, NAVIGATE to the pre-request tab.
• Add the below lines of code in the script to add a request header for all the requests present in the collection.

• Click on Update for saving the script.
• Execute the request in the collection and check if the headers are added to the request in the Postman console.

Header from Pre-Request Script:

Basic Authentication is one of the authentication techniques provided in Postman that ENSURES that we can set the username and password along with the API requests. We can do this by first setting the CREDENTIALS of the API by:

• Navigating to the Authorization tab.
• From the dropdown, select Basic Auth.
• Add the username and password to the API in the input fields given.

The test CASES can be WRITTEN as follows:

YES, it is POSSIBLE. It can be achieved by creating a collection and adding all the requests having the same authentication token to that collection and then assigning the AUTH token to the collection. This can be applied to the INDIVIDUAL requests by selecting the “Inherit auth from PARENT” option in the Authorization tab.

Postman has the following VARIABLE scopes:

• Global Variables: Global variables allow data access between different collections, requests, and scripts. They are available throughout the workspace.
• Environment Variables: These allow us to tailor the requests about different development environments - such as LOCAL testing, stage testing, or prod testing.
• Local Variables: These are temporary variables that are accessible only WITHIN the scope of requests scripts. They are either scoped to a single request or single collection, DEPENDING on the requirements. These variables are not available after the completion of the SCRIPT execution.
• Collection Variables: These variables are scoped to be available for all the requests present in a collection. They are independent of the environment.
• Data Variables: These variables come from external JSON or CSV files for defining the datasets required to run the collection in Collection Runner or Newman.

When working on enterprise-level applications for organizations, it is not PREFERRED to STORE our WORK on the POSTMAN cloud because of the required privacy and security. In the Postman cloud, there are chances of security BREACHES by a skilled hacker.

304 status code STANDS for NOT MODIFIED. This is used for diminishing the bandwidth of the network in cases of restricted GET requests. In such cases, the RESPONSE BODY should be empty or blank and the headers should have a date, LOCATION, signature ETC.

Base64 encoding is primarily USED because it does the task of data TRANSMISSION in a textual format that is easier to be sent in the requests in HTML form statistics format. Another reason why we USE this is that using identical 64 characters for encoding is heavily reliable in any language we use.