API 101 using Postman: A Workshop Recap

Introduction

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on API and Postman with Supun Sathsara a Postman Student Expert in NIBM. We delved into the world of API testing and exploration using the versatile tool, Postman. This article will go over my firsthand experience and walk you through the key concepts we covered.

Table of Content

1. What is Postman?
2. Postman Operations.
3. Key Concepts.
4. Conclusion.

Getting Started with Postman:

Postman, for those unfamiliar, is an API platform for building and using APIs. It provides a user-friendly interface for making requests to APIs and collecting responses. The workshop started with an introduction to API and Postman. We were given an overview of the Postman interface. We learned through documentation and identified the endpoints, request methods, and parameters.

Postman Operations:

1. Create (POST)
2. Read (GET)
3. Update (PUT/PATCH)
4. Delete (DELETE)

Read (GET)
Our journey started with the concept of requesting an element. Following the guidance of Postman Student Expert and the documentations we identified the endpoint for a particular resource. We then used Postman to send a GET request to retrieve the data for that resource (The documentation provided has three categories to choose from. Jokes, Quotes, and Books). Here's a snapshot of the process,

Create (POST)
In the context of APIs, this involves sending a POST request to add new data. During the workshop, we created requests to simulate adding new resources to an API. Postman's interface makes it easy to organize and send these requests:

Update (PUT/PATCH)
Moving on to Update, these methods are used to modify existing data. It's important to differentiate between PUT and PUSH when these methods are called.

Delete (DELETE)
The final concept out of CRUD was Delete. A DELETE request is employed to remove resources from the API. With Postman, we grasped how to structure and execute such requests:

As it can be seen all the commands were executed easily and solely with the help of Postman.

Key Concepts

• Addresses
• Methods
• Parameters
• Request Codes
• Response Codes

Conclusion

The API Postman workshop at NIBM provided a hands-on experience in working with APIs using Postman. From creating requests to understanding responses, this enhanced our understanding of CRUD operations. I believe I have a better understanding of API and Postman and am better equipped to develop our future projects with the help of Postman.

See you soon,
MDeen