Creating a Postman Collection: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

Postman collections allow you to group together related API requests and endpoints, making it easy to organize and test your APIs. In this post, I'll walk through how to create a Postman collection from scratch using some simple examples.

What is a Postman Collection?

A Postman collection is a group of HTTP requests that can be saved, organized into folders, and reused. Collections allow you to define variables, authorization, environments, and more for your API workflow. Some key benefits include:

• Easily group related API endpoints together
• Run sequences of requests to test API functionality
• Save collection states for later use
• Share collections publicly or with your team

 

 Creating a New Collection

 
Let's create a simple Postman collection to demonstrate the process:

1. Click on the "New" button in the upper left.
2. Select "Collection" from the modal window.
3. Enter a name like "My Sample Collection" and optional description.
4. Click the "Create" button.

That's it! You now have an empty Postman collection that's ready to have requests added.

Adding Requests

With our collection created, let's add a few sample requests:

1. Click the "New" button again and select "Request".
2. Enter request details like name, endpoint URL, method (GET, POST, etc).
3. Click "Save" to add to collection.
4. Repeat to add a few more requests to your collection.

Once you've added requests, you'll see them listed within your new collection. You can organize requests into folders and add tests, scripts, environments, and more.

Running the Collection

To run your new API collection:

1. Open the collection and select the first request.
2. Click "Send" to make the request and get a response.
3. Use the built-in runner to send the entire collection of requests sequentially.

The runner will send each request in order and display the responses so you can validate your API calls are working as expected.

Next Steps

And that's the basics of creating and running a Postman collection! Some next steps:

• Add dynamic variables and authorization
• Set up collection-level tests using scripts
• Create a mock server from the collection
• Generate public documentation

Postman collections are immensely powerful for API testing and development. Start organizing your endpoints today to boost productivity and collaboration!