Book Image

API Testing and Development with Postman

By : Dave Westerveld
1 (1)
Book Image

API Testing and Development with Postman

1 (1)
By: Dave Westerveld

Overview of this book

Postman enables the exploration and testing of web APIs, helping testers and developers figure out how an API works. With Postman, you can create effective test automation for any APIs. If you want to put your knowledge of APIs to work quickly, this practical guide to using Postman will help you get started. The book provides a hands-on approach to learning the implementation and associated methodologies that will have you up and running with Postman in no time. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this book begins by taking you through the principles of effective API testing. 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. You'll then be able to try some hands-on projects that will teach you how to add test automation to an already existing API with Postman, and guide you in using Postman to create a well-designed API from scratch. 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 (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: API Testing Theory and Terminology
6
Section 2: Using Postman When Working with an Existing API
13
Section 3: Using Postman to Develop an API

Creating maintainable tests

One of the things that frequently gets forgotten in conversations about test automation is that they take time and work to maintain. The "sales pitch" for test automation is that we can run the same test over and over again "for free" but of course, that is not true. Leaving aside the hardware and software costs of running these tests, there are maintenance costs. Tests don't always pass. Sometimes, failures are due to finding a bug, but other times, it is just because the code has changed and the test needs to be updated, or because of some kind of flakiness in the system that we don't need to worry about too much. Well-written tests take these considerations into account. They assume that there will be failures in the future that need to be debugged. So, how do you set yourself up to make sure that your tests are maintainable?

Using logging

One of the ways in which you can make it easier to figure out failures is by...