Postman: APIs’ testing as if I were a child [part III — Postman Configuration]

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. A. A. Milne

Continuing the Postman’s series, today we will know this tool a little more.

If you missed the previous posts, the first post was an analogy for APIs and the second one explained why testing APIs are better than API requests.

Postman is a complete API Development Environment (ADE). We usually use it for testing, but it allows us to do a lot more things like creating Mocks, monitoring, documentation, and more.

The purpose of this post is to show some Postman settings, so let’s go:

Configuring Postman

Sharing Collections and Environments

After installing Postman, you can create or log in as a user. This registration is important to share Collections and Environments with a team.

Regarding the definition of Collections and Environments, I’ll explain it in the next post, where we will use Postman to run tests on an API.

Postman’s Themes

Another detail that some people do not know is that it is possible to change the Postman’s theme. To do so, click File > Settings > Theme.

I prefer the second option based on color contrast however you can choose the option that pleases you more.

Debug Console

Another thing that some people do not know is that it is possible to create JavaScript scripts in Postman, we will talk more about them in the next post.

There is an icon on the left lower side that allows tracking of logs and executions

Pane View

Another detail that some people do not know is that on the right side there is an icon that configures the layout of Pane View, whether it will be single or double.

The default option is the Single Pane View, in this option the requisition and response options will appear one below the other.

The second option is the Two Pane View, in this option the requisition and response options will appear side by side.

I prefer the Two Pane View option. Depending on the size of the data in the request or the response, this option becomes more pleasant for scrolling.

What have we learned so far?

• Postman initial configurations.

In the next post, we will start API testing with Postman, with more details about collections, environments, variables, pre-request, among other things.

See you there!