Postman

Learning Objectives

Pre-requisites

Lesson

The Problem

Building an application usually involves creating a frontend and a backend. The frontend will include a user interface with buttons, inputs etc. as well as the logic for converting those interactions into the appropriate HTTP requests to inform the API of the user's actions.

When it comes to creating, updating and deleting resources then, the UI essentially exists to provide an easy way for humans to convert intuitive actions like clicks, drag-and-drops etc. into network requests. But what if we don't need this and just want to develop and test our API without having to first create an entire user interface? This is where Postman comes in.

What is Postman?

Postman is an app which helps you develop an API. It allows you to make arbitrary requests to a server and check the response data. You can also do this with cURL - a command-line tool - but Postman is usually easier to work with. We will be using Postman to develop and test our API before fleshing-out a proper frontend.

Postman app

Installing Postman

Download the Postman app from their website to install it locally.

Assignment

  1. Test the Express endpoints you created previously using Postman.