How to Use Postman Online for API Testing

March 11, 2024, 5:33 a.m.

Postman is a popular form for testing and is active among APIs, whether you're a planner or an exploratory. Postman Online, as known or named at another time or place, is a variant of Postman that runs in your network internet or web viewing software, assigning you API testing and cooperation tasks outside the need to establish some operating system on your computer.

What is an Application Programming Interface (API)?

API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for creating software applications.

• APIs define how one piece of software should communicate with another.
• APIs serve as a connection point between two software applications, allowing them to communicate. A programming interface (API) is a set of software capabilities that another application can use.
• It can be considered the waiter, who acts as a middleman between your requests and the chef. Similarly, API refers to the middleman between a client and a server.

What is a Postman?

Postman is an API platform for developers to design, build, test, and iterate their APIs.

• We can say Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs.
• Postman is an API (application programming interface) development tool that helps to build, test, and modify APIs. Almost any functionality that could be needed by any developer is encapsulated in this tool.
• It is used by over 6 million developers every month to make their API development easy and simple.

Advantages of the Postman

1. Streamlined API Testing: Postman specifies an easy-to-use interface for generating and posting API requests, making it secure to test API endpoints and obey answers. It grants you the ability to send miscellaneous types of requests (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) and customize headers, limits, and request carcasses.
2. Automated Testing: Postman provides an automatic test for any type of API. Automation reduces the manual work necessary for reversion experiments and ensures consistency in your API tests.
3. API Documentation: Documentation involves analyses about request endpoints, headers, limits, and sample answers.
4. Collaboration, consistency, consistency and teamwork: Postman offers workspaces where groups of parts can collaborate on API test projects. Multiple consumers can create requests, groups, and statuses within a joint table. Team members can leave comments, share accumulations, and determine responses, enhancing partnership and project administration.

Why use Postman?

• Free: Postman is free software that we can use for API testing. It is free to download and use for teams of any size.
• Easy-to-use: Postman is an easy-to-use software tool. We can send HTTP requests of various types (such as GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, etc.).
• Community and Support: It has a huge community forum for customer support and extensive documentation.
• Extensible: Postman facilitates our customizing it according to our needs with the Postman API.
• API Support: It facilitates us to make any API call (REST, SOAP, or plain HTTP) and easily inspect even the largest responses. It also helps manage the end-to-end lifecycle of the API, starting from design to mocking, testing, and finally maintaining the APIs.
• Runtime Services: Postman provides Runtime Services that help us manage API collections, environments, workspaces, and different examples.
• Integration: Postman facilitates our ability to easily integrate test suites into our preferred CI/CD tools and services, such as Jenkins with Newman (a command-line collection runner).

 

Key Terminologies

1. Workspaces: The Workspace API allows you to list, signify, smuggle, and erase notebooks and folders. A notebook is a network-situated link to a document that holds runnable laws, visualizations, and descriptive text.
2. Create New: This option creates new API requests, collections, environments, and other Postman assets.
3. Browse Templates: You can approach a study of pre-created API templates and groups formed for one Postman community or by Postman itself.
4. Recent: This division displays currently achieved workspaces, collections, and requests to help you quickly proceed with your work.
5. Search: The search bar lets you follow particular API requests, collections, and different properties inside your workspaces.
6. Activity properties feed Activity (if handy): Some versions of Postman can involve a project feed that shows current changes, comments, and updates fashioned by you and your associates inside your workspaces.
7. Learn Postman: This division often contains links to instructional possessions, instructions, and documentation to help you determine how to use Postman efficiently.
8. Your Workspaces: Here, you can visualize the upper class of your workspaces, which may be private or joint team parts. You can switch between middle and two-point workspaces to arrange your projects.
9. Notifications (if handy): Some versions of Postman can display announcements within your workspaces or revise Postman.
10. Settings: The background cuisine allows you to configure Postman choices, containing ideas, announcements, and other embracement alternatives.

How to Create and Test APIs using Postman Online

1. Sign APIs in or sign up for your Account in Postman Online for:

Go postman right side corner create an account, sign in or create register button.

2. Create a New API:

Go to the postman's left corner and click the "New" tab.

Working With GET Requests

A GET request is a means passed down in HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to fetch information from a server. When a GET request is sent, it appends information to the URL as a query framework. This information is apparent in the URL, making it correct for requesting information. GET requests are idempotent.

Step 1: Take a dummy API and Go to reqres.in URL.

Pick any URL, paste it into the postman bar, and use the HTTP method.

 

Step 2: Send the Request for Testing

Fill out the requirements of the postman bar and click on the "Send" button in the right corner to send the request for API testing.

 

Step 3: View the Request Response:

Postman will send the request to the specified URL, and you will be able to view the response in the Postman API. The response will include the status code, headers, and body of the API response.and output.

 

Working With POST Requests

A POST request is used to transmit information to the server that is expected to be processed or stored. Unlike GET requests, POST requests do not display information in the URL. Instead, they contain the information in the request body, making them correct for sending impressionable or large amounts of information. They can have different belongings each time they are performed.

Step 1: bar, go to browser, copy the API URL and paste it into the Postman Bar

 

Step 2. Apply the Request Body:

In the "Body" tab, you can outline the payload or facts you want to send with the POST request. This may be with miscellaneous plans like JSON, form-dossier, or raw paragraph, determined by the API's necessities. Select the appropriate layout and specify the information formats accordingly.

Basic Part:

• Parameters: Add any URL parameters if required.
• Authentication: Configure authentication if the API requires it (e.g., Basic Auth, API key, OAuth).

Step 3. Pre-Information formats (request scripts) (optional):

If you need to run scripts before shipping the request, you can use the "Pre-request Script" label to adhere to JavaScript law. This may be valuable for creating active ethics or operating arrangements.

Step 4. Save arrangements as optional arrangements optional arrangements and send the request:
Save the request and click the send button to execute the POST request.
 

Step 5. View the Response:

Postman will display the response from the API, containing the rank rule, headers, and response body. You can examine the answer to validate that the API behaves as anticipated.

Create a Collection in Postman:

Creating a group in Postman is an easy process. Postman is a common API experiment, and accumulations are used to group and systematize API requests. Here are the steps to construct a group in Postman.

• Click on the "Collections" tab in the left sidebar.
• Click the "New Collection" button or the "Create a Collection" option.
• Give your collection a name.

For more details about the collection, check out this article.

Conclusion:

Postman is a very powerful tool for developers and hackers. Many types of requests can be sent, and very important information can be obtained. A free and paid version are also available on the market.

 

Thanks............................................

---