Postman
A GUI tool for manually and programmatically testing APIs.
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Overview
Postman provides a graphical interface for constructing and sending HTTP requests, organizing them into collections, and writing test assertions against responses -- widely used for manual API exploration and lightweight automated API testing.
- What it is
- A GUI application for constructing, sending, and testing HTTP API requests.
- Why it's used
- It's faster than writing code for exploratory API testing, and collections can be shared across a team as living documentation.
- Where it fits
- A common first tool for exploring an unfamiliar API before writing any client code against it.
Core concepts
- Requests and collections
- Environments and variables
- Test scripts (assertions)
- Collection runners
Example
Postman's test scripts are plain JavaScript, run after a request completes -- letting you assert on status codes, response bodies, or headers without leaving the GUI.
pm.test("Status is 200", function () {
pm.response.to.have.status(200);
});Common use cases
- Exploring and documenting an unfamiliar API
- Lightweight automated API test collections
Project ideas
- Build a Postman collection for a small REST API, with a few requests and passing test assertions on each