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

Using environments in Postman

Postman environments are a place where you can create and manage variables. You can set up multiple environments for different purposes. Environments are very helpful when you need to share data between requests, and so in this section, I will show you how to use them to manage your variables. You can also manipulate variables in the environment, and so I'll show you how to do that as well so that you can also use Postman environment to help you explore or debug issues. In the first place, let's look at how to manage variables using environments.

Managing environment variables

Creating an environment is easy. Follow these steps to create one:

  1. Click on the New button and then select the Environment option.

    You can give your environment a name; in this case just call it something like SWAPI Env. You can then start creating variables in the environment. Let's use this environment to manage the person_id variable that you are...