Postman Installation and Navigation
Postman is available and can be downloaded for all the major Operating Systems, including Windows, Mac and Linux. Postman can also be used as a chrome extension application. But, it is recommended to install the Postman application as the extension does not support all the features.
Quick Links -
INSTALLATION
For Windows
For installation, Postman is available for Windows 7 and later versions of Windows.
First step is to download the postman application. Refer to the following link -
After downloading, select and run .exe file, to install the postman in your system.
For Mac and Linux
The step of downloading Postman software remains the same for every operating system.
Later steps vary a little. For the purpose to meet, you can refer to the official documentation of postman - https://learning.postman.com/docs/getting-started/installation-and-updates/
NAVIGATION
Navigation of postman basically means to look and understand its User Interface. Postman offers a variety of tools to help us manage our API based projects. The UI structure of postman can be divided into four areas. They are -
On opening the software, it looks like the following -
Let us learn about each areas one by one.
HEADER
The header section looks like -
Where,
Home - directs us to our personal home page which includes our activity feed, recently visited workspaces, alerts, etc.
Workspaces - facilitate us to search for new workspaces, view recently viewed workspaces and create new workspaces
API Network - helps in exploring the Public API Network and in accessing our team’s teams' Private API Network.
Explore - browse public APIs, teams, etc.
Search Postman - allows to search all the workspaces, collections, APIs, teams, etc in Postman.
Invite - If we have an Admin role on a workspace, we can invite other users to collaborate.
SIDEBAR
It provides access to the fundamental elements of Postman. The sidebar in Postman looks like -
To hide the sidebar, one can select the “sidebar icon” from the footer. Elements of sidebar are -
Collections - Postman collections are a group of saved requests. Reusing saved requests makes testing convenient.
APIs - This section is used to create, update, rename or delete an API in our workspace.
Environments - An environment is a set of variables which can be used in our Postman requests. We can use this to group similar values together and manage access to Postman data.
Mock Server - By adding a mock server in our collection, we can simulate the behavior of a real API. We can make requests that return mock data if we do not have a production API ready.
Monitors - Monitors are used to schedule runs and receive reports on our request test data.
History - It is used to access requests that we have already make. When we sign in to Postman, our history syncs across our devices.
WORKBENCH
Workbench is the place where we do most of our works like working with APIs, collections or other element types. Tabs allow us to organize our work. Right sidebar, environment selector and environment quick tools also helps in easing our work. But in this post, we will be discussing only about tabs.
Tabs
Tabs look like -
Tabs allow us to organize and work with different requests.
Opening a new tab - To open a new tab, we can click on the + sign in workbench or press Ctrl + T
Saving or discarding changes - Postman shows a dot next to the tab name if it is unsaved. Select save to save the changes and if we want to close the tab and discard changes, we need to click on cross sign x for the same.
Viewing conflicts - If the contents of a tab is changed or altered in another tab, Postman alerts us with the conflict and prompts us to resolve it.
Managing tabs - We can have many tabs opened at one time. To manage the tabs, we need to select to more actions (...) option. There we have following options that we can select as required -
1. Recently closed tabs
2. Duplicate Selected Tabs
3. Close Selected tab
4. Force Close Selected Tag
5. Close All but Selected Tag
6. Close All Tabs
7. Force Close All Tabs
FOOTER
The footer represents the bottom of Postman. It looks like -
Where,
Hide Sidebar - is used to hide or open/unhide a sidebar.
Sync Status - to see if our Postman is connected to the Postman’s server and if our data is syncing.
Find and Replace - To search the current workspace or replace any searched item. It only works in the desktop app of Postman.
Console - It helps in inspecting and debugging our Postman requests.
Git branch icon - It helps to switch between branches for APIs using a Git repository.
Cookies - to view, manage and sync cookies.
Trash - to recover or permanently delete any deleted collection.
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By now, you might have got familiar with the interface of Postman application. In coming posts we will be seeing on how to work on it.
Thank you.
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