You can learn more about status codes here. For example, 200 means that your response is correct, 400 that your request failed due to an error in your configuration, and 500 means there’s an error coming from the server.

They tell you if everything is fine or if there is an error with your API call. Status codes are a series of standardized three-digit codes that represent the status of a response. Params and Headers help you make your request more specific and authentication is used to access private APIs that require tokens. These are optional values that you can pass to your API. To provide the required options, there are three tabs in Postman’s requests dashboard that you will use more frequently: Params, Auth, and Headers. Each API usually has its own documentation that tells you what kind of options you have for making your queries. Params, headers, and authenticationĮach API has requirements or specifications that are unique to each endpoint. The server then receives the request and returns a response, usually in the form of JSON.

DELETE helps you delete content from the API.

PATCH or PUT allows you to update existing content.

POST allows you to write new content or update the existing one.

GET retrieves content that is read-only.

Here we will see the list of the most commonly used methods: Requests in Postman are made similarly but in a more didactic way. When the query request is sent, it communicates with the server with a CRUD HTTP request method that enables you to interact with the content of the API. Requests in your code can be made with many languages and structures, but in general, they happen as follows: you give your application an API endpoint and a query request written in REST or GraphQL. Here’s a preview of how the Dashboard looks in the desktop app:Īs we have already seen in the post on how APIs work, we know that they allow us to request data structures that we use in our apps. In the upper left corner of the center Scratch pad overview, click the + button to open a new work area and set up your calls.

This is where you paste your API endpoint URL. The first and most important element is the request URL field. You will see that there are many elements with which you can interact let’s look at the more frequently used options so you understand the interface before diving in. Now let's learn how you can run an API on Postman.

Postman download for api testing