Postman Installation and Updates

Postman can be downloaded for all major operating systems, including Mac, Linux, and Windows, as a native app (standalone application). Postman is also available as a chrome extension application, but it is better to install and use the native app because Postman chrome extension does not support all the features that the native app has.

Introduction to Postman

For developers, Postman is the API Platform to build, test, iterate, and design their APIs. Postman reports that it has 25+ million registered users and 75k open APIs as of February 2023, which it tells constitutes the largest public API hub in the world. The organization is in San Francisco and has an office in Bangalore, in which it was discovered.

History of Postman

In 2012, Postman started as Abhinav Asthana's side project, who wanted to clarify API testing, during work at Yahoo Bangalore. As a free app, Abhinav Asthana launched Postman in Chrome Web Store. Ye recruited old colleagues Abhijit Kane and Ankit Sobti to help in creating Postman Inc. as the usage of the app grew. Today, these three co-founders run the company, where Sobti serves as CTO and Abhinav as CEO.

Products of Postman

• API repository: It permits the user to save, catalog, and cooperate across API artifacts within a central platform in partner, private, or public networks.
  • One truth source for APIs: Postman offers a centralized, version-controlled, and cloud-based repository for every API artifact from the whole API lifecycle. Every tool of the Postman platform uses the repository, which guarantees one truth source for our APIs. This API repository allows organizations and teams to assemble metrics and detect insights from the built-in governance facilities in the platform.
    The web and desktop applications of Postman link to the API repository by workspaces for public, partner, team, and personal use. Also, we can connect our API repository to other tools and products we use by the pre-built integrations of Postman. We can better scale, organize, and simplify our whole API lifecycle with the API repository of Postman, whether it is for one API or for our whole API landscape.
• Tools: API detection, mock servers, API testing, API documentation, API design, and API client.
• API builder: It helps in implementing the workflow of an API design with specifications, including RAML, GraphQL, and OpenAPI. It develops varied APM solutions, gateways, CI/CD, and source controls.
• Intelligence: API governance, reporting, workspaces, API repository search, security warnings, etc.
• Workspaces: Public, partner, team, and personal workspaces permit developers to cooperate externally and internally.

Postman API development

Postman Provides its support for API- initial development with API Builder. In Postman, we can apply the API Builder to develop our API. Then, our API definition can act as one truth source for our API project. We can connect many elements of our API development and inspection process to our API definition, including monitors, tests, documentation, and collections. Also, we can sync our API with the Git repository in Postman.

High-level steps

Below are some high-level steps required when designing and integrating APIs:

• Creating API: We can begin a new API in the first step in Postman.
• With API version control: We can sync our modifications between the remote Git repository and Postman. We can also release a version when we are ready to distribute our modifications to customers.
• Developing API: We can build our API by adding collections and editing our API definition. Also, we can produce server-side code from our OpenAPI 3 specification and validate our API definition and attached elements.
• Testing API: We can add tests to our API and apply CI integration to create and automate the testing process.
• Deploying API: We can connect our API deployment service to include greater visibility in Postman.
• Monitoring API: We can add monitors to inspect our API.
• Handling and sharing APIs: We can share our APIs with several team members, see changes, view changelog, and add comments.
• Mocking API: We can configure a mock server to reproduce the endpoints of our API to test and development purposes.
• API reports: We can use reports to see statistics, including the improvement, development, and usage done by our team on APIs.

Navigate API Builder

To see and implement APIs, we can choose APIs inside the sidebar. We can open and change any previous APIs or create or ship new APIs. We can utilize the arrows to increase API within the sidebar and see the linked elements and definition files of API.

When we choose API, the workbench shows the API overview. This overview shows the API description, published versions, and linked collections. Also, the overview offers quick access to operations, including viewing deployments, inspecting the API, adding tests, and connecting to any repository.

Steps to download and install the native Postman application

Step-1: Go to the link https://www.postman.com/downloads/ and click download for Mac or Windows or Linux based on your operating system.

Step-2: For downloading the app for Windows, click on the download button and select the particular version. I opted for the 64-bit version. If you are using a 32-bit OS, you can choose the 32 bit, as shown in the above image.

Step-3: You can check the download progress on the bottom left if you are using the Chrome browser. Once the .exe file is downloaded, you need to install the application, as shown in the below image.

Step-4: Once the installation completes, you will be redirected to a window as shown in the image where you can click on Stop signing in and take me straight to the app (as this app can also be used without logging in) or otherwise you will get a new window to sign up.

It is better to create an account as this will help you to save the work you do within the Postman, and with this, you won't lose any work.

Step-5: Create your account with all the required details, or you can also signup with Google, as shown in the image.

Step-6: After signing in, select the workspace tools as per your requirement, and then click on, continue to get the startup screen.

Step-7: You will see the following page, and then you are ready to use Postman.

Steps to update the Postman

• You will receive a notification in your Postman app if any update is available.
• To download or install the latest update, click on the Settings icon, as shown in the image below, go to Settings>Update.
  
• You can change the update settings by enabling the settings of automatically download major updates, as shown in the image below.
  
• You can also check for the latest updates by clicking on Check for updates, which will show you if any new update is available.
• You will have to select the update option to download and install the latest update. When the download is complete, you will see a notification asking you to restart the app to install the updated features.
• It automatically downloads minor updates and bug fixes.