Collections

The Highest logical container for grouping stuff. You can share/import/export a collection.

Request

You can make a copy of a request with ctrl+c and paste it everywhere with ctrl+v.

Workspace

You can have multiple local workspaces and join shared workspaces. Freeplan includes collaboration up to 3 people.

Moving parts from your personal work to another workspace

You can only move collections from personal to a shared one. (But be careful: Viceversa doesn’t work, you will need to export and import it, if you want to do this)

Environments

You can create environments and chose one for a test-run, regardless on which level you are (request, folder or collection) I would create an environment for each server.

Variables

Variables can have 5 different scopes. The lower defined variable will override the more global defined ones.

  • Global (pm.globals or via ui)
  • Collection (pm.collectionVariables or via ui)
  • Environment (pm.environment or via ui)
  • Data (via ui on runner using data file)
  • Local (pm.variables)

variable precedence

initial and current state

Every variable in Postman can have an initial value. The current value will always override the initial value. The initial value will be shared within your team, the current won’t be shared.

Authentication

It is not feasible to define auth header on every request. Thats why you can inherit auth headers from upper folders and finally from the collection.

Reading variables from request view

Writing tests

You can write tests in javascript.

Predefined stuff:

variable “responseBody” represents the responseBody as vanilla object public class “pm” holds all postman methods.

  • Pre-request Script will run before Postman sends the request
  • Test will run after Postman received a response

examples:

pm.test("test-name", function () { 
    pm.response.to.not.have.jsonBody("error"); 
});

pm.test("test-name", function(){
    pm.expect(pm.environment.get("env")).to.equal("production");
})

pm.test("test-name", function(){
    pm.expect(stsToken).not.to.undefined;
})

Getting an object from json response:

// option 1 if no special chars are involved
response.context.key

// option 2 if  special chars are involved
response[’@context’].key

Learnings

  • Don’t keep a tab open with unsaved changes.
  • Don’t put too many variable into environment. Eg. Create a new environment for each application.

Runner

You can iterate over specific requests, folders or collections in postman. You can use a csv or json file as input (Like ids)

To create some data, I used a pre-request script like this:

// Generate a random value containing only 0-9 and a-e characters
const characters = '0123456789abcdef';
let randomValue = '';
for (let i = 0; i < 12; i++) { // Adjust the length as needed
    randomValue += characters.charAt(Math.floor(Math.random() * characters.length));
}

// Store the random value in an environment variable
pm.environment.set("randomValue", randomValue);

// Log the random value to the console (optional)
console.log("Random Value: ", randomValue);

// Append the random value to a file (this will be done in the Collection Runner)
pm.test("Store random value", function () {
    pm.environment.set("randomValues", pm.environment.get("randomValues") + randomValue + "\n");
});

After this, I copy pasted all entries from the randomValues environment variable into a file.

Updated: