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

What are API specifications?

Some APIs follow strictly defined protocols. However, RESTful APIs follow an architectural style that was laid out by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation. This means that there are general principles laid out that they follow, but there is not a strict protocol that they must adhere to. This balance between structure and flexibility has been a powerful concept and has contributed to the widespread adoption of this kind of API architecture. There is no such thing as a perfect solution, however, and this is no different. One of the benefits of SOAP APIs is that the structure must be specified following strict programmatic rules. This means that the API definition must be written in a way that computers can easily understand. This makes it easy to create a lot of general-purpose automation for these kinds of APIs. If a computer can understand the layout of an API, you can automatically generate some kinds of documentation, tests, and even code from that...