March 2014 Summaries

Beginning his career at Box.net with limited knowledge of Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, Rory quickly transitioned from a finance background in a defense and aerospace company to a senior sales engineer role. Discovering the utility of Postman, he immersed himself in learning about and testing Box's API without writing code, which was facilitated by Box's transition to a RESTful API. His journey involved using Postman collections to understand and demonstrate the potential of Box's API, helping him become adept at answering queries and showcasing capabilities to colleagues and customers. Rory credits Postman for significantly aiding his transformation from a non-technical professional to an expert in software services within a few years, highlighting its dual role as both a development tool and an educational resource.

Postman offers a robust feature set for running automated tests on API requests, with a tutorial series guiding users from basic to more complex test creation using the Collection Runner. In this first tutorial, users are introduced to the test editor, where they can quickly write tests using JavaScript and utilize snippets for efficiency. The tutorial demonstrates creating a simple test on a demo API, focusing on checking the status code and Content-Type header, and showcases how to handle expected failures. By integrating testing into a user-friendly environment, Postman simplifies the typically code-heavy process of API testing, making it accessible even to those new to programming. Future tutorials in the series promise to delve into more advanced testing techniques, and readers are encouraged to stay updated via Postman's blog and Twitter.

Postman's latest update introduces two major features aimed at enhancing user experience and efficiency. The first feature, Postman Interceptor, allows users to capture requests directly from Chrome and save them to Postman’s history without needing a proxy or code changes, enabling real-time API debugging across multiple operating systems including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chrome OS. This tool can filter requests based on URLs and is especially useful for users without pre-built collections or those debugging app APIs. The second update includes improved rendering for JSON and XML responses, integrating JSONView and XMLTree libraries for easier navigation of large response bodies and faster rendering times. The Postman Interceptor is open-source, with its code available on GitHub, ensuring transparency and local data storage in IndexedDB, while the update also improves the search feature, contributing to a more streamlined user experience.