10 Postman Best Practices

Postman is a powerful tool for testing APIs. It allows you to test your API endpoints and see the results in real time. Postman also has a number of other features that make it a valuable tool for API development.

In this article, we will discuss 10 Postman best practices that will help you get the most out of this tool.

1. Use the Postman Console

The Postman Console is a powerful tool that allows you to see all of the request and response data in one place. This includes the headers, body, URL, and more.

Not only does this make it easier to debug your requests, but it also allows you to see what data is being sent and received. This is especially helpful when troubleshooting errors.

To access the Postman Console, simply click the “Console” tab at the bottom of the Postman window.

2. Write tests to validate your responses

When you’re building an API, it’s important to make sure that the data you’re sending is correct. Tests give you a way to automatically check the responses from your API to make sure they’re what you expect them to be.

Not only does this save you time in the long run, but it also helps to prevent errors. By writing tests, you can catch problems early on and fix them before they cause bigger issues down the road.

3. Save time with snippets and templates

As your API testing suite grows, you’ll find yourself repeating the same tests over and over. This is especially true if you’re working with a team of testers who all need to run the same tests.

Instead of wasting time re-running the same tests, create snippets or templates that can be reused. Snippets are small pieces of code that can be inserted into your tests, while templates are complete test suites that can be imported into Postman.

Both snippets and templates can be saved and shared with your team, so everyone can benefit from your efficiency.

4. Create a request with variables

When you’re working with APIs, you’ll often need to send the same request multiple times with different data. For example, when testing an API, you might need to test it with different data to make sure it works as expected.

Creating a request with variables lets you reuse the request and simply change the variable values when you need to. This saves you time and makes your workflow more efficient.

To create a request with variables in Postman, first, click on the “Variables” tab in the sidebar. Then, click on the “Create new variable” button.

Enter the name of the variable and its value. You can also choose whether the variable is global or local. Global variables can be used in any request, while local variables can only be used in the request where they are defined.

Once you’ve created the variable, you can use it in your request by enclosing it in double curly braces {{}}. For example, if you have a variable named “id” with a value of “123”, you would use {{id}} in your request.

You can also use variables in the URL of a request. To do this, select “URL encoded” from the dropdown menu next to the URL field. Then, enter the variable names and values in the format “key=value”.

Postman will automatically replace the variables in the URL with their values when you send the request.

5. Organize your work with collections

API development can quickly become overwhelming as the number of API endpoints and corresponding requests grows. To stay on top of things, it’s important to have a system for organizing your work. Postman collections are an excellent way to do this.

With collections, you can group related requests together and even organize them into folders. This makes it easy to find the request you’re looking for, and it also makes it easy to share your work with others.

If you’re not already using collections, start today. It will make your life much easier.

6. Integrate Postman with Jenkins for Continuous Integration

When you’re working with APIs, it’s essential to have a process in place that automatically tests your API endpoints to ensure that they are still functioning as expected. This is where Continuous Integration comes in.

By integrating Postman with Jenkins, you can set up a process that will automatically test your API endpoints and give you feedback on whether or not they are still working as expected. This way, you can be confident that your API is always working as intended, and you can avoid any potential issues that could arise from changes to your API.

Integrating Postman with Jenkins is relatively simple, and there are many resources available online that can help you get started. Once you have Jenkins set up, you can use the Postman Collection Runner to automatically run your tests and provide feedback.

7. Share your work with team members or the world

If you’re the only person using postman, then all your collections, environments, and mocks are only available to you. But as soon as you start sharing your work with others, they can provide feedback, collaborate on changes, and use your work to speed up their own development process.

There are two main ways to share your postman work. The first is to export your work as a JSON file, and the second is to publish it to the postman API.

Exporting your work as a JSON file is the best way to share your work with other postman users, because they can simply import the file into their own postman instance. This is the recommended approach if you want to share your work with a small group of people.

Publishing your work to the postman API is the best way to share your work with the world, because anyone can access your work by making a simple HTTP request. This is the recommended approach if you want to share your work with a large number of people.

8. Monitor your APIs with monitors

As your API usage grows, it becomes increasingly important to make sure that your APIs are always available and returning the correct responses. Postman’s monitors allow you to do just that by sending regular requests to your APIs and checking for specific conditions in the responses.

If a monitor detects an error, you’ll be notified immediately so that you can take action to fix the issue. This way, you can rest assured that your APIs are always up and running as expected.

Monitors are especially useful for monitoring production APIs, but they can also be used for testing purposes. For example, you could use a monitor to check that a new feature is working as expected before deploying it to production.

9. Mock servers to simulate APIs

Suppose you’re working on an app that uses an external API. You could just hit the endpoint and hope for the best, but what if the API is down? Or what if it changes and breaks your app?

Instead of relying on the real API, you can use Postman’s mock servers to simulate the API. This way, you can develop and test your app without worrying about the stability of the real API.

Plus, mock servers have other benefits, like being able to share a collection with others without giving them access to the real API.

To get started with mock servers, check out this tutorial.

10. Automate your API testing in the cloud with Newman

Newman is a command-line collection runner for Postman that allows you to run and test a Postman Collection directly from the command line. This is important because it allows you to easily integrate API testing into your continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.

By automating your API tests with Newman, you can quickly and easily verify that your APIs are working as expected before each deployment. This will save you time and money by catching errors early, and prevent them from being deployed to production.

It’s also worth noting that Newman has a number of other benefits, such as the ability to run tests in parallel, which can further speed up your testing process.