REST client
What is a REST client?
REST (Representational State Transfer) is the most popular architectural style for building APIs. In a RESTful architecture, resources can be accessed or manipulated with standard HTTP methods, such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. A REST client removes some of the complexity of sending requests and parsing responses, which makes it easier for developers to explore, test, and debug REST APIs.
How does the Postman REST client work?
Postman's REST client is the industry standard tool for working with REST APIs. With the Postman REST client, you can:
Create requests that include encoded, raw, multipart, or binary data—and save them in Postman Collections
Define variables at the global, collection, session, and environment levels, and use them in any request's URL, headers, and body
Generate collections in a single click from a wide range of API schema formats, such as OpenAPI, RAML, and WADL
Define, send, and save complex requests
- Leverage pre-configured code snippets to quickly author tests for any request
- Use the Postman Collection runner to validate complex workflows by chaining requests together
- Debug issues at any stage of the API lifecycle by running tests on-demand—or run automated tests on Postman's cloud infrastructure
Create a robust API test suite
- View status codes, response times, and response sizes at a glance
- Leverage automatic language detection, link and syntax highlighting, search, and text formatting to inspect response bodies at a deeper level
- Use the Postman Visualizer to create and share rich visualizations of parsed response data
Inspect and visualize responses
- Define authentication details at the request, collection, or folder level using a variety of authentication protocols—including OAuth 2.0, JWT, and AWS Signature
- Capture cookies returned by the server and save them for reuse in later requests
- View and set SSL certificates on a per-domain basis to easily send requests over an encrypted connection
Manage authentication workflows
What can you do with a REST client?
Traditional approaches to calling a REST API require the API user to know a programming language, understand the API's protocol, and interpret the response. A REST client streamlines this process, enabling developers of all levels to explore, test, and debug REST APIs from an intuitive user interface. This makes it easier for teams to integrate public APIs into their applications—and allows them to easily spot and fix issues in their own API's code.
What other protocols does the Postman API client support?
Postman is more than just an API client—it's an API platform that simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and enables teams around the world to collaborate more efficiently. In addition to REST, the Postman API client also supports GraphQL, SOAP, WebSocket, and gRPC, so you can get started quickly with the protocol and architectural style that make sense for your project.
The Postman API client is tightly integrated with the rest of the platform, which allows you to leverage Postman's full feature set—including workspaces, API documentation, mock servers, and monitors—regardless of your API's stack. Postman also offers advanced features, such as role-based access control, API governance, and API security, for Professional and Enterprise teams.
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