Book Image

API Testing and Development with Postman - Second Edition

By : Dave Westerveld
5 (1)
Book Image

API Testing and Development with Postman - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Dave Westerveld

Overview of this book

Postman is an invaluable tool for exploration and testing of web APIs and helping testers and developers figure out how an API works. With Postman, you can create effective test automation for any APIs, and this guide will help you unleash its full potential. API Testing and Development with Postman is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to create a good quality API, but isn't sure how to go about it. This guide will help you unleash the full potential of Postman’s test automation capabilities. A combination of theory coupled with real-world examples will help you learn how to use Postman to create well-designed, documented, and tested APIs. After you’ve familiarized yourself with the theory, you’ll move on to hands-on projects that will teach you how to add test automation to an existing API. You’ll also learn some of the new and powerful features that Postman has that can help you avoid introducing bugs. This second, fully updated edition features new chapters on workflow testing, creating and using mock servers, API security testing, and performance testing. The new and expanded information in this edition will help you future-proof your APIs. By the end of this book, you'll be able to use Postman to set up and run API tests for any API that you are working with.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
1
API Testing and Development with Postman, Second Edition: API creation, testing, debugging, and management made easy

Summary

Let's pause for a minute to consider everything we have gone over in this chapter. You've installed Postman and already made several API requests. You have learned how API requests work and how to call them. I explained some basic testing considerations and gave you strategies that you can start to use right now in your day-to-day work. You also got to make calls to GraphQL, SOAP, and REST APIs and learned a ton of API terminology.You now have some firm ground that you can stand on as we proceed through the rest of this book. I will take you deep into a lot of API testing and design topics and help you get the most out of Postman, but in order to get the most out of it and not feel frustrated, it would be good to make sure you understand the topics covered in this chapter.Take a minute to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Would I feel comfortable reading an article on API testing? Could I follow along with the terminology used?
  • What are some basic strategies and approaches that I can use in API testing?
  • If I was given an API endpoint, could I send a request to it in Postman? What things would I need to do to send that request?
  • If I was given some API documentation, could I figure out what kind of API it was and send requests to it?

If you can answer these questions, you certainly have the grounding that you need for moving on in this book. If you are not totally sure about some of them, you might want to review some of the relevant sections in this chapter and make sure you have that solid ground under your feet.You've learned a lot already! In the next chapter, we will dive into some of the principles of API design and look at how to use Postman to help put those principles into practice when creating an API.