July 2021 Summaries

An intern at Postman, who is also a gaming enthusiast, created a Slack bot named ValoRoster to keep track of professional Valorant players and teams, addressing the challenge of staying updated in the rapidly evolving competitive gaming scene. The bot was developed using the PandaScore Valorant API, Postman Collections, webhooks, and Slack API functionalities, allowing users to obtain biographical and roster information through simple Slack commands. The development process involved overcoming challenges such as selecting a suitable API, automating requests with webhooks, and integrating Slack notifications, which required learning about Postman’s limitations and Slack’s command functionalities. The creator optimized ValoRoster by consolidating collections and improving the bot's design, error handling, and modular message formatting before publishing the project and its documentation on GitHub. The project underscored the importance of collaboration, resourcefulness, and understanding the intricacies of Postman’s tools, leading to a successful launch of a helpful resource for gaming fans.

Postman has introduced first-class support for Socket.IO, a popular library that facilitates real-time, bidirectional communication between web clients and servers using WebSockets. This new feature allows developers to test and debug Socket.IO APIs in Postman for the web and Postman Canary, with the native app update expected in early August. The integration aims to enhance the developer experience by providing robust tooling and diagnostics without the need for repetitive coding, allowing for interactive debugging and management of Socket.IO connections. Users can easily set up connections, listen to specific events, and send messages with various input formats, while enjoying features like an event timeline, search and filtering options, and color-coded event categorization. As the feature is still in beta, Postman plans ongoing improvements, including support for more WebSocket subprotocols and integration with other Postman functionalities, driven by community feedback and collaboration.

Postman's latest featured list highlights several companies offering APIs focused on enhancing application security, each providing unique functionalities and resources for developers. Ping Identity offers identity security solutions with step-by-step collections for integrating features like authentication and MFA, while Fastly, a content delivery network, provides APIs for application and API protection using web application firewalls. Datadog extends its observability services to include security monitoring and management APIs for real-time threat detection. Intel offers open-source, hardware-based security solutions through its Security Libraries for Data Center, with quickstart collections for easy deployment of security features. Akamai, also a content delivery network, provides APIs for managing and customizing security configurations. These APIs are available in public workspaces, allowing developers to explore and integrate security measures into their applications effectively.

Sid Maestre, director of engineering at Lob, discusses how the company is enhancing its developer experience by utilizing OpenAPI specifications to create a more streamlined interaction with their direct mail and address verification APIs. The initiative led to the creation of the Lob Public Workspace in Postman, allowing developers to easily access and interact with Lob's APIs through tailored documentation and video walkthroughs. By directing developers to this public workspace instead of a GitHub repository, Lob aims to simplify the onboarding process. Developers can start by registering for a Lob account, obtaining API keys, and forking the Lob API collection and environment into their Postman workspace. This setup enables users to perform various operations on addresses, postcards, letters, and more, with additional features like address autocomplete and zip code lookup for US locations. The Postman Collections also offer generated client code snippets in multiple programming languages, enhancing the ease of integration into different development environments. Lob invites feedback from developers to further refine their workspace offerings.

Postman has introduced support for WSDL (Web Services Description Language) files, addressing a long-standing user request and enhancing its capacity to handle multiple API specification formats. This new feature allows developers to import WSDL files, generate SOAP requests, and collaborate on testing and debugging SOAP services within Postman's collections and workspaces, facilitating work across different architectural patterns and software standards in a single platform. Users can import WSDL 1.1 and 2.0 files, with Postman automatically generating SOAP envelopes, streamlining the process of crafting requests. This update also enables users to define SOAP services as Postman APIs, link requests to documentation, and validate collections against the WSDL schema to ensure alignment with the API specification, thus improving service quality and reducing discrepancies between stated specifications and actual traffic. Postman encourages feedback through GitHub, its community forum, and direct contact to refine this feature further.

Postman's proxy feature enhances debugging and documentation by capturing HTTP traffic, including both requests and responses, allowing users to analyze the sequence and data exchange in API calls without re-executing requests. The latest version supports response capturing, which can be saved to a workspace's history or organized into collections based on domain names and endpoints. This intelligent grouping aids in managing collections more effectively and reflects in tests and documentation. The proxy also streamlines documentation creation by automatically capturing responses for each endpoint, allowing users to define success and error states without manually inputting responses. This comprehensive documentation enables users to add detailed descriptions for collections, folders, and requests, ensuring thorough API documentation.

Tanishq Sandhu, a Postman Student Leader at Georgia Tech, reflects on organizing the inaugural Data Science & AI Leaders of Tomorrow (DSAILT) Conference & Expo during the COVID-19 pandemic to foster collaboration and provide opportunities for students distanced from campuses. The virtual conference, which took place in April 2021, was student-led and received enthusiastic support from both academia and industry, including corporate partners like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The event featured presentations from students across top universities such as Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin, alongside tech talks and panel discussions by industry professionals. Over 4,000 students from 65 universities worldwide RSVP'd, and 45 speakers participated, highlighting diverse applications of data science and intelligence. Sandhu emphasizes the value of the mentorship and resources received, expressing a commitment to future collaborative events for the global student community.

API publishers within the Postman community are striving to create more seamless developer experiences by enhancing the onboarding process through public workspaces, with a particular focus on improving the Time to First Call (TTFC) metric. This study highlights that TTFC is crucial for public APIs as it represents the initial payoff for developers, allowing them to quickly understand and integrate the API into their applications. The developer journey to an API involves several stages, including browsing, signing up, making the first API call, implementation, and usage, with each stage offering insights into the API's capabilities and suitability. Improving TTFC not only streamlines the onboarding process but also expands the potential market by creating a pool of better-educated users. The effectiveness of TTFC can be measured both subjectively through usability testing and objectively using web analytics, focusing on the quality of documentation, sign-up processes, and onboarding guides. Enhancing TTFC is essential for maximizing the developer base and overall API adoption, as demonstrated by companies like Vonage and Symbl using Postman public workspaces to optimize their onboarding processes.

Earlier this year, Postman collaborated with Codebase, a student organization from UC Berkeley, to develop cloud integrations within Postman for platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The efforts led to the creation of seven unique integrations, available as Postman Collections in the Codebase Cloud Integrations public workspace, each featuring comprehensive documentation and tailored environments. These integrations, while not native to Postman, leverage APIs to simulate built-in functionalities, and one notable integration is with AWS CodeCommit, allowing users to upload and sync Postman Collections directly with their AWS repositories. The integration process involves forking the AWS CodeCommit Integration collection, setting up environment variables, obtaining a Postman API key, and ensuring proper AWS permissions. Furthermore, Postman offers features like monitors for automatic updates and mock servers for testing without valid credentials, enhancing user experience by automating tasks and simulating workflows.

Postman Intergalactic is a new online educational series hosted by the Postman team, offering one-hour lessons tailored to different types of Postman users, such as developers, testers, and admins. The sessions are divided into "introductory" and "next-level" categories, each concluding with a live Q&A. Upcoming sessions include "Postman: An Introduction for API Ops Professionals" and "Postman: Design and Prototype an API," scheduled for August. Interested participants can register for these sessions or watch previous lessons through the Postman Intergalactic public workspace, which provides collections and documentation to facilitate learning. Additionally, participants can opt to receive notifications about future sessions by using the Notify Me button on the series homepage.

Postman's "Visualize for the Prize" hackathon, running from July 14 to 28, 2021, invites students worldwide to creatively present API data using Postman Visualizer, a tool that allows for the programmatic visualization of API response data with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Participants are encouraged to enhance data comprehension and engagement by crafting visualizations such as pie charts or maps, with the competition culminating in prize announcements during the inaugural Postman Student Summit on August 7-8, 2021. This online event, free to register, will feature talks from students, educators, and the Postman team, celebrating APIs and showcasing innovative approaches to data visualization.

Tatiana Perry from Nylas discusses how the company utilizes Postman to efficiently distribute its API and enhance the developer experience. Nylas, an API-first company offering solutions for email, calendar, and contact data, has created a public workspace in Postman to facilitate easy exploration of their offerings. They leverage Postman's features such as environments to define API variables, scripting for authentication validation, and requests as documentation to streamline the process for developers. By integrating environment variables and providing example requests for each endpoint, Nylas simplifies the task of making API requests. Additionally, the Postman platform allows Nylas to keep developers updated through features like the "Run in Postman" tab, which supports real-time updates and collaboration.

The Postman Student Summit, held online on August 7-8, 2021, is a global event designed to enhance API literacy among students and educators, irrespective of their background in computer science or programming. The summit includes keynotes from Postman Co-founders Abhinav Asthana and Ankit Sobti, who will discuss the future of APIs and their significance in software development. Participants can expect a range of API-focused talks led by members of the Postman student community, and those who are certified Postman Student Experts or Leaders have the opportunity to present their talks by submitting proposals. The event also features a pre-event hackathon, “Visualize for the Prize,” starting on July 14, with prizes like a Raspberry Pi 4 kit and an exclusive chat with a Postman employee. The summit aims to foster global collaboration and learning in the API field, with the Postman Student Programs team encouraging all interested individuals to register and participate.

The Postman API Platform significantly enhances the workflow for engineering teams by consolidating various functions into a single, organized interface, making it particularly beneficial for frontend developers and engineering managers. The platform allows for efficient team collaboration through features like shared workspaces, which provide a quick overview of activities and changes, and API monitors, which enhance the reliability and performance of third-party APIs. It also integrates documentation directly with API collections, ensuring that all necessary information remains easily accessible and up-to-date, which simplifies onboarding processes by reducing the need for multiple platforms and scattered resources. The commenting feature within collections further facilitates clear communication, enabling conversations to remain contextually relevant and portable. With integrations for tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, Postman offers a streamlined and transparent approach to managing and monitoring APIs, making it a valuable tool for maintaining efficiency and clarity in engineering workflows.

In August 2020, Postman initiated a strategic effort to build a vibrant student community focused on API literacy, inspired by CEO Abhinav Asthana's earlier experience with student communities. Recognizing students' desire for skill development over mere giveaways, Postman launched three key programs: the Postman Student Expert program, which offers self-paced training in core API concepts; the Postman Student Leader program, which empowers students to teach their peers; and the Postman Classroom program, which supports educators with resources and free licenses. Complementing these are API 101 workshops and the Postman Student Community Discord for global interaction. Their commitment to promoting API literacy culminated in the first Postman Student Summit in August 2021, fostering collaboration and learning among students and educators worldwide.

Notion has launched the public beta version of its API, a highly requested feature, to enable developers to interact with pages and databases within the platform. To facilitate a seamless experience, Notion has made its API available in a Postman public workspace, allowing developers to quickly make their first successful API call and experience the platform's capabilities. The API supports basic functions such as searching for content and writing in Notion, and it includes OAuth 2.0 support for public integration distribution. Developers are encouraged to start exploring the API by creating a new integration on Notion's website, using Postman to test authentication methods, and joining the community on Slack to provide feedback and collaborate. Notion aims to continually enhance its API offerings based on user input.