What is Postman? - Postman Tutorial

- [Instructor] At its simplest, Postman is a sort of graphical version of the cURL command line utility. cURL provides a rich structure for controlling most aspects of individual http requests. By comparison, Postman gives us a convenient graphical interface for issuing http requests against a website or API. With so many great tools, that basic but powerful functionality is only part of the story. Postman is far more than merely a graphical cURL. It truly is an API development environment. Like cURL, we use Postman to test our APIs in that we can construct requests, issue them, inspect results, and iterate as necessary. Postman is so similar to cURL that it even provides mechanisms for translating requests between the respective formats. As an API development environment, Postman allows us to save and organize requests, switch between environments, use variables to substitute information, and even collaborate with our team. In fact, many of Postman's best features are hidden in plain sight. In this course, we'll discuss the features that will provide the most immediate benefit to you as an individual contributor to a project with an API. Postman is available at different price points for different needs. The free Postman plan is an amazingly robust offering. My small team has found it more than sufficient for our needs, and it is more than adequate for the material presented in this course. The Pro and Enterprise plans are fantastic for larger organizations that require extended monitoring or support for some of the more advanced features not discussed in this course. Be sure to check the Postman site for a full feature comparison and current pricing information, but remember that nothing in this course requires anything beyond the free plan. If you haven't done so already, you can download Postman from the product page. Click the product link at the top of the page and select Postman. From there, click the Download the App option. Then run the installer appropriate for your platform. Although an account is not strictly required to use Postman, several of the features discussed in this course will need one. You can create a Postman account here by clicking the Sign In button at the top, then selecting the Create an Account option. Alternatively, when you start Postman for the first time, it will ask you to sign in or create an account. I've already installed Postman on this computer and signed in, so I'll switch to it now. You may have multiple Postman accounts. To add an account, open the profile menu and select the Add a New Account option. This is useful for keeping your projects separated in the way best suited to your needs. For instance, if you're a consultant working for multiple clients, using multiple accounts may be preferable to creating multiple workspaces within a single account. When signed in with multiple accounts, Postman lets you easily switch between them by listing them individually in the profile menu. We won't be switching accounts in this course, but it's definitely something to keep in mind as you consider how to apply Postman within your projects.