Postman
API or Application Programming Interface is a simple and flexible way to communicate (fetch or give information) between web services. If we have the intention to build, test, and modify an API, we need to choose some development tool and one of the common technologies we could learn is POSTMAN. It is used by over 5 million developers from all over the world.
Postman helps developers embed the required functionality into their system. The API helps with the HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, with the environments that can later be used and to convert the API to code in the programming languages like JavaScript and Python.
Let’s see how the Postman software is used to send and receive requests while we implement an API. We can also POST the data to the server via this tool. The software testing tool makes sure that the API testing is done very efficiently by adding on the documentation of the APIs.
Formal Definition of Postman
Postman can be defined as a software testing API platform that integrates a simple Graphic User Interface with an intention of an easy view of the HTTP requests and responses in the system. The impressive feature of the postman is that you don’t need to write an HTTP client network code but can instead build test suites called collections which will then help the interaction between Postman and the API.
Concepts to know while learning Postman
API
API or Application Programming Interface is a simple and flexible way to communicate (fetch or give information) between web services. When we use any the applications like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, we use an API.
HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP is the communication between clients and servers in the form of requests and responses. A client sends an HTTP request using a browser to the server where the request is then processed. Following is the response the server sends to a client. All kinds of data can be transmitted via HTTP like text, images, audio, video, etc. The most used HTTP operations are GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, HEAD, and DELETE.
Global Unique Identifier
The Global Unique Identifier (GUID) includes hexadecimal digits separated by hyphens. The postman identifier GUID fulfills the goal of uniqueness.
Advantages of using Postman
1. Postman is easily accessible since it can be used anywhere with just an installation and login activity.
2. With the help of Postman, you can build collections for the API calls and create multiple requests and subfolders that will lead to an organized test suite.
3. The test environment of Postman includes verifying successful HTTP response status to add them to each API call and thus test the checkpoints.
4. Automation testing can be performed repeatedly with the Collection Runner or Newman — saving time for repeated tests.
5. Multiple environments are formed to make the test replication less because the different setting has the same collection.
6. Since the data retrieval is tracked — debugging is easy.
7. The collections can be imported and exported with a direct connection to share them.
8. Continuous integration is supported.
Limitations of Postman
As much as the advantages of Postman are high — there are some limitations as well. Let’s take a look at some of them.
- Postman can not process more than 1000 API requests.
- Large Projects have difficulty managing collections adn requests.
- Since there are dynamic API requests — the coding workspace will lead to code duplication.
Alternatives of Postman
Postman is used for API testing and can be replaced with some other development tools like the ones below:
- Tricentis Tosca
- Katalon Studio
- Apigee
- Jmeter
- SoapUI
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