Postman is a powerful tool to test and run APIs. We use it a lot at EMnify and our API knowledge base articles are mostly based on it. The aim of this article is to give you an overview of the most important features offered by Postman and links to find more information about them.

1. Send a request

Once you have installed the tool, you can directly try to run an API.

Enter the following GET request in the field "Enter request URL": 
https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler

The default http verb is GET. Click on send and you should see a "lorem ipsum" text appear in the Body. 

You ran your first API. 

Here is a short video showing how to run a more complex API. It shows where to enter more information about it: Header and Body (loud music so mute your computer):

From an EMnify point of view, to run our API described here, you need to enter our URL https://cdn.emnify.net/ followed by the right API call like /api/v1/authenticate

2. Collections

You can save your APIs in collections which are "a group of saved requests you can organize into folders." 
Click on "save" next to the button "send", give your request a name and a description. Before saving, you need to add it to a collection. Click on "Create Collection", give it a name and save. You can see it appear on the left. 

You can add more Requests to your collection and also divide them in folders to organize them better.

3. Environments, globals and variables

Postman documentation covers these key notions very well, to find more info, visit their website. 

Three videos are also relevant to the subject:

4. Runner

The runner feature offers you the possibility to run all the APIs of a collection one after the other. Here is a video explaining it:

To test what you just learned, you can follow one of our articles: How to use an application token for API authentication.