Postman

A tool for testing HTTP based APIs

Many APIs are based on HTTP requests and responses.

Examples:

• The backend of a NextJS app
• The GitHub API
• The UCSB Developer APIs

Postman is a useful tool for testing such APIs.

It allows the user to format GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and other messages, including:

• setting HTTP headers
• putting content in the request body

It then allows you to inspect the response content, including headers and body.

How to set up postman to capture your Auth0 authentication cookie:

(Notes by Scott Chow)

• Install Postman here: https://www.postman.com/downloads/
• Open your locally running app (e.g. running on localhost)
• Inspect the page via > Application > Storage > Cookies
• Copy the a0:session cookie’s name and value into postman’s cookie setter
• Fire the request on postman to the app backend, see that it’s authenticated