save-as-postman-request

This code is part of a blog post and is not actively maintained by Postman.

Command line utility to process piped curl responses and create postman a request on a collection using the Postman API

Purpose

This code demonstrates how to use the Postman API to create requests and responses on a collection, given an specific curl command output.

The goal of this repository is to demonstrate how the Collection Items endpoints can be used to modify a Postman collection adding requests and responses programmatically, without having to perform a full PUT of the collection.

In order to do that, we have created a small Postman API wrapper that enables users to create collection requests and responses. We have also created a Javascript file called savePostmanRequest.js that can be executed as a shell script.

NOTE: You need a valid Postman API key saved in an environment variable called POSTMAN_API_KEY in order to execute the command.

export POSTMAN_API_KEY=PMAK_your_key

Usage

The (savePostmanRequest.js)[savePostmanRequest.js] command receives the following arguments:

./savePostmanRequest.js --inputFile <inputFilePath> --collectionId <collectionId> [--requestId <requestId>] [--requestName <requestName>] [--responseName <responseName>]

Argument	Description
inputFile	the file that contains the output of a curl command, generated using the -v or --verbose option. Mandatory.
collectionId	the id of the collection to save the new request to. Mandatory.
requestId	the id of the request to save the new example (response) to. If not provided, a new request will be created on the collection.
requestName	the name of the new request to be created, by default is 'Request'.
responseName	the name of the new response to be created, by default is 'Response'.

NOTE: CURL doesn't provide information related to the request body. If you want to create a new request, make sure you set the REQUEST_BODY environment variable with the request body before calling this command.

Example of a POST request

1. Save the request body in the REQUEST_BODY env variable.

export REQUEST_BODY=$(cat request_body_example.json)

2. Execute the curl command we want to save a response for, and save all the outputs to a file.

curl -v -X POST --location 'https://postman-echo.com/post' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data $REQUEST_BODY > curl_output.txt 2>&1

3. Process the file using the command, and create a request and response in a specified collection.

./savePostmanRequest.js --inputFile curl_output.txt  --collectionId 16473433-c05fb60e-bb28-4e7b-9cf7-55ada6ab320c --requestName 'Example from command line'

This is the output of the command:

➜  save-as-postman-request git:(main) ./savePostmanRequest.js --inputFile curl_output.txt  --collectionId 16473433-c05fb60e-bb28-4e7b-9cf7-55ada6ab320c --requestName 'Example from command line' --responseName='Post response'
Request created with id e057b34d-04b7-543f-c69a-069b48a6617a
Response created with id d2715ac5-b9b9-7e6f-e71d-e21040248939

Example of GET request

1. Execute the curl command we want to save a response for, and save the output to a file.

curl -v -X GET --location 'https://postman-echo.com/get?param=value' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' > curl_output_get.txt 2>&1

2. Process the file using the command, and create a request and response in a specified collection.

./savePostmanRequest.js --inputFile curl_output_get.txt  --collectionId 16473433-c05fb60e-bb28-4e7b-9cf7-55ada6ab320c --requestName 'Example from command line get' --responseName='Get response'

This is the output of the command:

Request created with id 40310d86-2c98-f1a5-2b89-37506ed8f489
Response created with id c8d4066a-b736-a001-73fd-ad8d72ed76e9

Adding a new response (example) to an existing request

You can also add new examples to an existing request, just passing the --requestId argument to the command.

./savePostmanRequest.js --inputFile curl_output.txt  --collectionId 16473433-c05fb60e-bb28-4e7b-9cf7-55ada6ab320c --requestName 'Example from command line POST' --responseName='Another post response' --requestId=16473433-536730af-5663-15c7-0625-43c0d5b89030

The command response will include only the newly created response id:

Response created with id 973b0ed3-9d3d-9d72-8e1e-6b57d1524e1b