Postman

This past week I began working on a new personal project. I am collaborating with a fellow Flatiron alumna to create a jeopardy-like game. We decided that since we aren't on a deadline, that we would take this opportunity to learn and implement new skills, features, and tools.
One new tool I started using while building the rails backend, is Postman. Once I created controller methods and routes the steps are fairly easy. For example, to simulate login,

1. Run rails server
2. Select POST from the method drop down list
3. Write out or copy/paste the login url
4. In the Body tab, enter the credentials or parameters as key value pairs.
5. Hit send and review the response.(My login method will either return user json or an error message.)

I was able to test login, signup, and check if JSON Web Tokens were being created, encoded, and decoded.
I would highly recommend utilizing this tool for anyone building out APIs.