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vibssingh

How to send PATCH Requests in Postman?

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In this tutorial, we will send a request performing the PATCH method in Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. What is PATCH method?
  2. Implementation Steps
    1. Create a Collection
    2. Add a request to the Collection
    3. Enter the details of request
    4. Verify the Response
      1. Status
      2. Body
      3. Format Type
      4. Headers

What is PATCH method?

 The PATCH method is used to partially modify an existing resource. This operation updates an existing resource but does not require sending the entire body with the request. PUT modifies a record’s information and creates a new record if one is not available, and PATCH updates a resource without sending the entire body of the request. Unlike PUT Request, PATCH does partial update e.g. Fields that need to be updated by the client, only that field is updated without modifying the other field.

We will use the following URL for this Postman tutorial.

https://reqres.in/api/users/2

Sample Request Body

{
    "name": "Patch_Test"
}

Implementation Steps:

To create the first PATCH request in Postman, follow the following steps:

Create a Collection

Step 1: Create a Collection, click on Collections, and then click on the “+” plus button.

Step 2:  Provide a name to the collection – “API Testing”.

Add a request to the Collection

Step 3: To create a new request, click on “Add a request” if it is a new Collection. Otherwise, click on the 3 dots and select “Add request”.

Step 4: Once you create a new request, then you will get the following window:

Enter the details of request

Step 5: Enter the “name” in the request. Here, the name is “PartiallyUpdateUser”.

Step 6: Enter the “URL” in the address bar.

Step 7: Now, select the “PATCH” request from the list of request methods.

Step 8: Add a Request body to the Post request

For this, select the Body tab.

Now in the Body tab, select raw and select JSON as the format type from the drop-down menu, as shown in the image below. This is done because we need to send the request in the appropriate format that the server expects. Copy and paste the request body example mentioned at the beginning of the tutorial to the postman request Body. 

Step 9: Press the “Send” button.

Verify the Response

Step 10: Once you press the send button, you will get the response from the server. Make sure you have a proper internet connection; otherwise, you will not get a response.

Status

You can check the status code. Here, we got the status code 200, which means we got a successful response to the request. In the case of new resource creation, the status code should be 201. But as this is a dummy API, we are getting a status code of 200.

Body

In the Body tab of the response box, we have multiple options to see the response in a different format.

Format Type

Each request has a defined response to it as defined by the Content-Type header. That response can be in any format. Such as in the above example, we have JSON code file.

Below are the various format type present in Postman.

XML

HTML

Text

Headers

Headers are the extra information that is transferred to the server or the client. In Postman, headers will show like key-value pairs under the headers tab. Click on the Headers link as shown in the below image:

We are done! Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

How to send SOAP request in Postman?

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In this tutorial, we will send a SOAP Request in Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. What is a SOAP Request?
  2. Implementation Steps
    1. Create a Collection
    2. Add a request to the Collection
    3. Enter the details of request
    4. Verify the Response

What is a SOAP Request?

Postman can make HTTP calls using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a platform-independent messaging protocol specification.

POST requests are used to send data to the API server to create or update a resource. The data sent to the server is stored in the request body of the HTTP request.
HTTP POST request provides additional data from the client to the server message body.

We will use the following URL for this Postman tutorial.

https://www.dataaccess.com/webservicesserver/NumberConversion.wso

Sample Request Body

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <NumberToWords xmlns="http://www.dataaccess.com/webservicesserver/">
      <ubiNum>1525</ubiNum>
    </NumberToWords>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Implementation Steps

To create the a SOAP request in Postman, follow the following steps:

Create a Collection

Step 1: Create a Collection, click on Collections, and then click on the “+” plus button.

Step 2:  Provide a name to the collection – “API Testing”.

Add a request to the Collection

Step 3: To create a new request, click on “Add a request” if it is a new Collection. Otherwise, click on the 3 dots and select “Add request”.

Step 4: Once you create a new request, then you will get the following window:

Enter the details of request

Step 5: Enter the “name” in the request. Here, the name is “SOAP_Request”.

Step 6: Enter the “URL” in the address bar.

Step 7: Now, select the “POST” request from the list of request methods.

Step 8 – Add a Request body to the Post request

For this, select the Body tab.

Now in the Body tab, select raw and select XML as the format type from the drop-down menu, as shown in the image below. This is done because we need to send the request in the appropriate format that the server expects. Copy and paste the request body example mentioned at the beginning of the tutorial to the postman request Body. 

Step 9: Add “Content-Type” to the Header.

Here, Content-Type is text/xml; charset=utf-8.

Step 10: Press the “Send” button.

Verify the Response

Step 11: Once you press the send button, you will get the response from the server. Make sure you have a proper internet connection; otherwise, you will not get a response.

Status

You can check the status code. Here, we got the status code 200, which means we got a successful response to the request. In the case of new resource creation, the status code should be 201. But as this is a dummy API, we are getting a status code of 200.

Body

In the Body tab of the response box, we have multiple options to see the response in a different format.

Format Type

Each request has a defined response to it as defined by the Content-Type header. That response can be in any format. Such as in the above example, we have XML code file.

Below are the various format type present in Postman.

JSON

HTML

Text

Headers

Headers are the extra information that is transferred to the server or the client. In Postman, headers will show like key-value pairs under the headers tab. Click on the Headers link as shown in the below image:

We are done! Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

What is API Chaining in Postman?

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In this tutorial, we will discuss the API Chaining in the Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. What is API Chaining?
  2. How to create a Collection?
  3. Add 2 requests in the Postman
  4. Use Environment variables to parameterize the value to be referred
  5. Update the fetched values in the env variables
  6. Run the second request

What is API Chaining?

The API chaining method is to create a sequence of API calls where the output of one API request is used as the input for the next. The technique is an automated and efficient way of executing a Multistep Process.

We will learn to get a response from one API and pass it as a request parameter in another API.

How to create a Collection?

Step 1: Create a Collection, click on Collections, and then click on the “+” plus button.

Step 2:  Provide a name to the collection – “APIChainingDemo”.

Add 2 requests in the Postman

Step 1: To add new requests to the collection, click on Collection and click Add requests (please note it’s also possible to create a request first and then add it to the collection, as well as move-in requests from one collection to another).

Request 1

https://reqres.in/api/users?page=1

Request 2

https://reqres.in/api/users/4

Request Body

{
    "name": "Test",
    "job": "zion resident"
}

Below is the image of the first request in the collection.

The output of the first response is

Below is the image of the second request in the collection.

Use Environment variables to parameterize the value to be referred

Select Environments on the left and select +.

Enter a name for your environment, and initialize it with any variables you need. You can also specify variables for the environment later.

In the Key field, enter the name of the environment variable that will be used in the Postman Collection. In the Value field, enter the value that will replace the variable when the call is made. For example:

Add scripts to fetch the value from the response of the first API.

Go to the Test tab of the first request and add the script to get the value of first_name.

The first test will check if the status code for the first response is 200.

The second test will fetch the value of the 3rd first_name from the response.

The third test will assign the value fetched in the previous script to the “Username” variable.

pm.test("Status code is 200", function () {
    pm.response.to.have.status(200);
});

var jsonData = pm.response.json();
value = jsonData.data[2].first_name
console.log(value)

pm.environment.set("Username", value);

Go to the Test tab of the second request and add the script to verify the status code.

pm.test("Status code is 200", function () {
    pm.response.to.have.status(200);
});

Update the fetched values in the env variables

Go to the new request and select the environment created just now. In this case, I have selected “APIChainingEnv” environment. Replace the hard code value of first_name with {{Username}}.

Run the second request

The first request will fetch the first_name value and pass it to the name in the second request. We can see that “Emma” name is fetched from the first request and passed to the second request.

Congratulations. This tutorial has explained the steps to perform API Chaining in the Postman. Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

How to run Collections remotely in Postman?

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You can share your collections, collection folders, APIs, and environments with collaborators. There are several different ways to share an element. Here, we are using API to share the Postman Collection.

To share a collection’s JSON using the Postman API, do the following:

Step 1 – Go to your collection – Click the arrow – Click on the Share button.

Step 2 – Select “Via API”.

Step 3 – Select Get collection JSON using Collection Access Key

Step 4 – Select Generate New Key to create a read-only collection access key. This key expires after 60 days of inactivity.

Step 5 – Copy the link and go to the Command line. Here we can run the collection using the collection URL using our Newman tool. Newman is the command-line runner for the postman.

Run the collection through URL by running the command:

newman run <copied URL>

Note: If Newman is not installed, please refer to this tutorial.

It starts running the Collection and displays the result. The same command is used to run the collection in the Remote system, even if that system has no Postman app installed.

vibssingh

How to schedule Collection run in Postman?

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In this tutorial, we will see the steps to schedule the run of Collections in the Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. Scheduling a Collection Run
    1. Click “Run Collections”
    2. Schedule the Run
    3. Select Configuration options
  2. Viewing a scheduled run
    1. View the schedule in Postman console
    2. View the email

Postman provides the capability to run the collections at specific times each day or week. For example, you may want to run a collection that tests the functionality of your API every day. You can use the Collection Runner to schedule collection runs to execute automatically at specified days and times.

  • Scheduled runs execute in the Postman Cloud.
  • Schedules share permissions with their collections. For example, if you have permissions to edit a collection, you’ll be able to edit that collection’s schedules.
  • Personal, private, and team workspaces support scheduling collection runs.
  • If you import or export a collection, its schedules don’t import or export with it. However, if you delete a collection, its schedules are deleted also.
  • Scheduled collection runs have the same usage limits as monitors.

When you schedule a collection run with the Collection Runner, the scheduled run is added to the collection’s Runs tab. You can view, pause, edit, and delete scheduled collection runs from the collection’s Runs tab.

Scheduling a Collection Run

Step 1 – Click “Run Collections”

Select Collections in the sidebar and select the collection or folder you want to schedule. Click on the “Run Collection”.

Step 2 – Schedule the Run

On the Functional tab, select Schedule runs.

Step 3 – Select Configuration options

Choose any configuration options:

  • The schedule’s name – Postman Automatic Run
  • The run’s frequency – Hourly
  • An environment associated with the collection (optional) – No
  • How many times you want the collection to run (iterations) – 1
  • A JSON or CSV data file (optional)
  • Notification recipients (optional)
  • Advanced settings (optional)
    • Retry if run fails
    • Set request timeout
    • Set delay between requests
    • Follow redirects
    • Enable SSL validation

By default, your queries are executed in the collection’s list order. Select the request you want to move, then drag it to the new position in the execution sequence. By unchecking the box next to a certain request’s name, you can also delete that request from the run.

Click the “Schedule Run“ button.

Viewing a scheduled run

Step 1 – View the schedule in Postman console

Select Collections in the sidebar and select the collection with the scheduled run you want to view.

Select the Runs tab.

Select the Scheduled runs tab, hover over your scheduled run, and Select View.

Double-click on any green bar and it shows all the test result.

Step 2 – View the email

Postman sends email as you have configured in the runner option. Here, I have configured to send email after failure of 1 consecutive run. So, we can see the sample email below:

Sample Email

Congratulations. This tutorial has explained the steps to schedule the Collection run in the Postman. Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

How to Create an Environment in Postman?

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In this tutorial, we will discuss the use of Environment in Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. What is an environment?
  2. Why do we need an environment?
  3. How do we create an environment?
  4. Steps to use the Environment
    1. Create an API Request
    2. Create an environment and add key-value pairs (variables)
    3. Select the environment from dropdown
    4. Refer the newly created variables in the request
    5. Run the request

What is an environment?

The environment is a set of key-value pairs. We can use environments to group related sets of values together and manage access to shared Postman data if you are working as part of a team.

Why do we need an environment?

Imagine we have 4 different environments – Dev, QA, UAT, and Pre Prod. These environments need different credentials to login to the application. So, we will create same request with different credentials or will keep on changing the credential of same request every time. This is a messy approach. So, the ideal scenario is we create environment variables for the changing attributes and select the environment for particular attributes. In this way, we have a single request with different combination of attributes.

How do we create an environment?

Select Environments on the left and select +.

Enter a name for your environment, and initialize it with any variables you need. You can also specify variables for the environment later.

Steps to use the Environment

Step 1 – Create an API Request

Create an API request in the collection.

I have created an API named as RegisterUser.

URL – https://reqres.in/api/register

Request Method – POST

Sample body

{
    "email": "eve.holt@reqres.in",
    "password": "pistol"
}

Save the request. Click on the “Send” button to verify the API returns a successful response as shown in the below image.

Step 2 – Create an environment and add key-value pairs (variables)

Create a new environment as explained in the above tutorial.

Add the values that are dynamic for different environments. Click the “Save” button to save the variables.

In the Key field, enter the name of the environment variable that will be used in the Postman Collection. In the Value field, enter the value that will replace the variable when the call is made. For example:

Enter a name for your variable, and specify its Initial and Current values. By default, the current value will copy the initial value.

  • The Initial Value is synced to your account using the Postman servers. It’s shared with any collaborators who have access to the environment.
  • The Current Value is used in your local instance of Postman and is never synced to your account or shared with your team unless you choose to persist it.

Step 3 – Select the environment from dropdown

Go to the new request and select the environment created just now. In this case, I have selected “QA” environment. Refer to the newly created variables in the request.

Step 4 – Refer the newly created variables in the request

Here, we can see that it is showing all 3 variables that we have defined in the previous step. To use an environment variable value in a request, reference it by name, surrounded with double curly braces:

Hover over a variable reference to get its current value.

Step 5 – Run the request

Click on the “Send” button. The request will be sent, and the response displayed as in shown the below image.

Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!! Cheers!!

vibssingh

How to generate Newman HTML Report?

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In this tutorial, we will generate a Newman HTML Report.

Table of Contents

  1. What is Newman HTML Report?
  2. Prerequisite
  3. Implementation Steps
    1. Install newman-reporter-htmlextra package
    2. Export the already created Postman tests
    3. Run the API collection through command line
    4. View Newman HTML Report
    5. Additional CLI Options

What is Newman HTML Report?

A Newman HTML reporter that has been extended to include the separation of the iteration runs so these are no longer aggregated together and also some additional handlebars helpers to enable users to create better custom templates

This reporter comes with a dashboard-style summary landing page and a set of different tabs that contain detailed request information. There are also a few optional configuration flags available, to tailor the final report in a number of different ways.

Prerequisite:

  1. NodeJS is installed
  2. Newman is installed

Implementation Steps

Step 1: Install newman-reporter-htmlextra package

Go to cmd prompt and type the below command:-

npm install -g newman-reporter-htmlextra

Step 2: Export the already created Postman tests

Export your Postman API collection as JSON file. To know how to export Collection in Postman, please refer to this tutorial –  How to Export Postman Collections?.

This screen provides the option to export the JSON file as Collection v2 or Collection v2.1 and click on the “Export” button.

Open the Command Line and go to that location of the collection JSON file.

Step 3: Run the API collection through the command line

Use the below command to execute the tests and generate an HTML Report. The following command will create a new report in the ./newman directory, if the directory does not exist, it will be created as part of the Newman run.

newman run API_Newman_Tests.json -r htmlextra

Go inside the newman folder and see a .html report is present.

Step 4: View Newman HTML Report

Double-click on the .html report and this will display. On the summary page, we get a summary of the test results we have run. We get detailed information like a number of iterations, assertions, skipped tests, and failed tests. From the Total Requests tab, we can get a lot of information like baseurl, the request body, the response header, and the response format. For more details, we can go to the Failed tests tab to check which scripts failed, the status code, and the assertion error message.

Go to the Total Requests tab to get all the information regarding the request method used, request URL, request body, response body, time taken to process the request, the means size of the request, and so on.

Go to the Failed Tests tab and see all the details about the failed tests.

Step 5: Additional CLI Options

Specify a path for the HTML Report.

Specify a path where the output HTML file will be written to disk.

Use the below command.

newman run API_Newman_Tests.json -r htmlextra --reporter-htmlextra-export ./results/report.html

If the path is not specified, the file will be written to the newmain/ in the current working directory.

That’s it! Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

How to import Collection into Postman?

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Postman is a powerful tool that allows developers to test APs efficiently. One of the key features of Postman is the ability to create and share collections, which are groups of API requests that can be organized together. In this tutorial, I will discuss how to import Postman collections.

Step 1: Open Postman and navigate to the Collections tab on the left-hand side. Click on the “Import” button located in the top-left corner of the screen.

Step 2: In the “Import File” modal, click on the “Choose Files” button and select the Postman collection file you wish to import.

Step 3: Once the file has been selected, click on the “Import” button to initiate the import process.

Step 4: After the import process is complete, you should see your newly imported collection listed in the Collections tab.

Step 5: Run the tests present in the Collection to see if the import is successful.

Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!

vibssingh

How to run Postman requests from the command line

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In this tutorial, we will run the Postman requests from the command line. Newman is a command line collection runner for Postman.

Table of Contents

  1. What is Newman?
  2. Implementation Steps
    1. Check if node.js is already installed or not
    2. Check if npm is already installed or not
    3. Install node.js
    4. Check if node.js and npm are successfully installed
    5. Install Newman
    6. Export the already created Postman tests
    7. Run the API collection through command line

What is Newman?

Newman enables you to run and test a Postman Collection directly from the command line. It’s built with extensibility in mind so that you can integrate it with your continuous integration (CI) servers and build systems.

Let’s learn about Newman and how to run the Postman collection using a command line.

Implementation Steps

Step 1: Check if node.js is already installed or not

Open your cmd from your machine

node -v

If found: ‘node’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file

That means node.js is not installed on your system yet.

Step 2: Check if npm is already installed or not

npm is node package manager which is used to installed packages over node.

npm -v

‘npm’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file message means that node is not found in the system.

Step 3: Install node.js

Newman is node.js program and to get newman we have to first install node.js

Official site: https://nodejs.org/en/download/

Depending upon the system requirement, select and download 32-bit or 64-bit for Window or macOS operating system Node.js installer.

Once the installer finishes downloading, launch it. Open the downloads link in your browser and click the file. Or, browse to the location where you have saved the file and double-click it to launch. Click the “Next” button.

Select the option “I accept the terms in the License Agreement” and click the “Next” button.

The installer will prompt you for the installation location. Leave the default location, unless you have a specific need to install it somewhere else. Click the “Next” button.

This screen shows that npm package manager is also getting installed. Click the “Next” button.

Select the “Next” button.

Click on the “Install” button.

This screen shows that installation is in progress.

Click the “Finish” button to end the installation process.

Step 4: Check if node.js and npm are successfully installed

Close the cmd prompt and reopen the cmd prompt. Type node-v command and see if the version is displayed or not. The below image shows that node.js of version 18.17 is installed on the machine.

Type npm-v command and see if the version is displayed or not. The below image shows that npm of version 9.6.7 is installed on the machine.

Step 5: Install Newman

npm install -g newman

It will get Newman then install in your system. It will take couple of second.

After finishing the installation you can see it has added all the packages from contributors.

Step 6: Export the already created Postman tests

Export your Postman API collection as json file

This screen provides the option to export the json file as Collection v2 or Collection v2.1 and click on the “Export” button.

On cmd go to that location of collection json file

cd C:\Users\Vibha\Desktop\Automation\Postman

Step 7: Run the API collection through command line

newman run API_Testing.json

The output of the above command is shown below. There is a log of entire over all summary showing iterations, requests, test-scripts, prerequest-scripts, assertions, total run duration, total data received, average response time and in case of any failure we get the details of failure and all.

Congratulations!! We have run the Postman tests through command line. I hope this tutorial is useful to you.

vibssingh

How to Export Postman Collections?

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In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to export a Collection in Postman.

Step 1: Open Postman and navigate to the collection you want to export. Click on the ellipsis (…) icon next to the collection name.

Step 2: Select “Export” from the drop-down menu. Choose the format in which you want to export the collection. Postman supports a variety of formats including JSON, CSV, and YAML.

Step 3: Choose the location on your computer where you want to save the exported file.

Step 4: Click “Save” to export the collection.

Please keep in mind that if you wish to export a huge collection in Postman, the export procedure may take a few minutes. You may quickly share your Postman collections with others or backup your collections for future use using the exported file.

We are done! Congratulations on making it through this tutorial and hope you found it useful! Happy Learning!!