The Basics of PostMan
Published: 2023-12-07 23:58:57

When you are creating a website for whatever reason, from shopping, social media, or entertainment, You will need a server to hold all your information. Setting up a server can be a bit tricky. The server will be hosted from a different computer rather than the one you are working on, which makes testing if your code can send and receive data difficult. Luckily there is an application called PostMan that will help with test sending and receiving data.

PostMan was created by a former intern at Yahoo called Abhinav Asthanan. He created PostMan as a side project due to API tests and development. It was first released in 2012 as a Browser extension then later became cross-platform. The application is free to download and easy to use. It will probably take an hour to download if I remember correctly. The link to download is at the bottom of the blog.

Let's look at how you can use PostMan

1. To use PostMan you need to have a good understanding of how to 
   use Ajax. I did a blog on the basics of Ajax but the blog 
   doesn't have all the details of using some of the commands. The 
   link to the Blog will be at the bottom of the blog.

2. When you start Postman it should create an empty file. If not,
   right-click the file box and click create/add file. Then select
   the request you want to do. There are seven to pick from but we 
   will only look at 4 of them.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qaaocup6ju30y5ja5k5z.png)

3. GET, this request will ask the server it's targeting for data, 
   then show the data in the response box. Also for each request,
   you will need a link to target the code sending the request. 
   This link will act as an ID for your code.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lutgkgsy88lvetre9lhe.png)

4. POST, this request will add data to the server. the response 
   box should show a number that represents if the data was 
   successfully sent.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/43xxcky9yztnlgrfru85.png)

5. Patch, this request updates the targeted data with the given 
   data
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/c809plo479p1ltq202o6.png)



6. DELETE, this request removes targeted data
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7v2bqn2f3w0pdlwtnsbj.png)



A good example of this application being used is test code for updates. Facebook and YouTube send requests to their servers. PostMan will help them check and see if whatever update they're doing will work/ not break any other code.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w72z9qo88g6wv68n9jrv.png)
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zrsy79b3quvm66ozst1u.png)



//link to AJAX blog
https://dev.to/gagecantrelle/the-basics-of-ajax-3m6
//links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman_(software)
https://www.postman.com/downloads/
https://logo-studio.blogspot.com/2011/08/facebook-icon-vector.html
https://pngpedia.blogspot.com/2019/11/youtube-subscribe-icon-logo.html