What is Postman?
Posted inMobile App Testing

What is Postman? How to use Postman to Test APIs?

Excerpt

This article discusses the Postman platform, its core capabilities, and more. You will learn about API testing in Postman and how to conduct it using a step-by-step procedure. At the end of the article, you will gain a conceptual understanding of the Postman platform and hands-on experience in API testing.

Introduction

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a set of rules or protocols that define how software components interact. You can use APIs to exchange data and functionalities between software applications.

Postman is a popular API testing tool used by testers to improve the quality of the APIs they develop. According to Postman, 98% of Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, AWS, Meta, Salesforce, PayPal, and Uber, leverage Postman to test and monitor their APIs.

In this post, we will explore the Postman API tool and API testing in detail.

Table of Contents

  • What is the Postman tool?
  • What is API testing?
  • Why API testing?
  • Postman key features
  • Setting up the Postman tool
  • Running API testing
  • Summary
  • Conclusion
  • FAQs

What is the Postman Tool?

Postman is a robust API platform that you can employ to design, test, document, and monitor APIs. It helps develop AI-ready APIs to maintain security controls, compliance frameworks and governance standards for enterprises.

The crucial aspect of Postman is that it accelerates API development by enabling effective team collaboration. You can develop APIs and quickly gather feedback from internal teams, partners, and the public within the Postman platform.

  • Key Advantages of Postman
    • Execute, test, and interact with APIs in seconds
    • Debug and write tests using PostBot
    • Eliminate duplication of work for teams
    • Develop high-quality APIs with fewer errors
    • Integrate Postman with key tools such as GitHub, AWS, Jenkins, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and GitLab.

Are you eager to learn more about the Postman Tool? MindMajix offers industry-focused Postman training with certified trainers. Completing the training will boost your Postman expertise and help you build a prosperous career in API development and testing.

What is API Testing?

API testing ensures API endpoints, methods, and integrations work as expected. You can run API tests either manually or automatically.

  • Types of API Testing
  • Contract testing
  • End-to-end testing
  • Unit testing
  • Security testing
  • Load testing
  • Integration testing

Why perform API testing?

  • Identifying defects earlier and resolving them to ensure the quality of APIs
  • Running API testing within CI/CD pipelines supporting more frequent releases
  • Automating API testing saves time and resources

Postman Key Features

  • The Postman API

You can use the Postman API to access and manage data stored in your Postman account. The API also supports performing CRUD operations on your collections, environments and more.

The webhooks folder in Postman lets you trigger a collection run via an API call to the webhooks URL.

  • Postman Echo

           Postman Echo is a Postman service that acts as a sanity checker and learning tool. You can use this service to test REST clients and make sample API calls.

           It allows sending requests via various protocols and using authentication methods, and it supports multiple parameters.

  • Postman Visualizer

This Postman feature helps you visualize your request responses. You can add visualization using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Moreover, you can customize the visualizer using charting libraries such as Chart.js and D3.js.

  • Collaboration

The Postman platform allows users to share workspaces, enabling multiplayer collaboration. It simplifies tasks such as forking, branching, commenting, tagging, and more.

  • Monitors for Regression Testing

           You can use monitors to measure the health and performance of APIs. Postman automatically runs the same monitor across multiple environments.           

Setting up the Postman Tool

Here you can find the details to download Postman on your system or the web version.

  • Download the free trial version of the Postman API platform using the link below.
  • You will download the latest version of Postman(v 11.70.6), released in November 2025.
  • If you want to install the Postman web version, you can use the link below. 

Running API Testing

Let’s learn how to run API tests using Postman in this section.

You can perform API testing manually, on a schedule, and in other ways.

  • Running API tests manually

You can perform functional API tests using Postman. It allows you to modify test plans as your needs change.

  • Running a Single Test

You can test a specific functionality by calling an API endpoint. You need to write test scripts to verify that you received the expected results from the API request you sent.

Here is the step-by-step procedure to perform a single test.

  • Navigate to the sidebar of the Postman workspace.
  • Click a collection
  • Select the request that you wish to run.
  • Select the request that you wish to run.
  • If you want to send the request to an environment, use the environment selector.
  • Now click ‘Send’
  • Click the ‘Test Results’ tab to view the results
  • Running a test on a schedule

Before running a test on a schedule, you need to perform the following.

  • Use Postman collections to organize individual API requests into a test suite.
  • Use the collection runner to configure the test run’s time and frequency.
  • Upload data files to run tests many times.
  • Use different data every time you run the tests

Here is the step-by-step procedure for running a test suite in Postman.

  • Click the collections tab in the sidebar of your workspace
  • Select the collection that you want to run on a schedule
  • Click the run
  • Navigate to schedule runs and then click the functional tab
  • Enter the name of the planned run
  • Specify the frequency of test runs and the testing time
  • Select the number of iterations that you want to run
  • Select the environment that you want to use
  • If you wish, you can select the users to whom errors and test failures should be reported.
  • Finally, click the Schedule run

Summary

  • Postman is an API platform that you can use to develop, test and document APIs
  • It provides an intuitive user interface that simplifies sending API requests and analyzing request responses.
  • It supports multiple HTTP methods, including GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, and PATCH. So you can easily test various API functionalities.
  • You can group multiple API requests in a Postman collection and use the Postman collection runner to run the requests.
  • Postman supports shared workspaces, so users can collaborate easily on a single platform.
  • It seamlessly integrates with key tools such as Jenkins, GitHub, AWS, GitLab, and Slack.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Postman is a user-friendly API platform that accelerates the API lifecycle development and optimization. It includes many key features, including automation, visualisation, integration, collaboration, and more.

FAQs

  • Is it easy to learn the Postman tool?

Yes, you can learn the Postman tool easily. If you have prior knowledge of the API development lifecycle, you will be able to understand the Postman platform quickly.

  • How long will it take to learn Postman?

You can learn Postman in 25 hours through live online and self-paced learning modes with MindMajix.

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