DEVOPSdigest

Postman released Postman 7.1, which features the ability to create APIs directly within the app that includes the API tab, API elements, extended schema support, and versioning and version tagging.

This addition places the API itself at the center of the Postman user experience, as a first-class element in the development workflow.

Postman 7.1 includes a brand new concept in Postman: the API tab. This tab creates an organized API workflow that is centered around your API. With your API at the center of your workflow, you can collaborate more smoothly, easily maintain a single source of truth, and shorten time to production.

Along with a new API Tab, Postman has added four additional new tabs that encapsulate the API development workflow –Define, Develop, Test, and Observe.

- Define: design or import your desired API schema and create a single central source of truth for your API.

- Develop: add elements to your API like mock servers to simulate endpoints, documentation to make your API easier to consume, and environments to easily switch between different setups within Postman.

- Test: build test suites for performance and behavior, integration tests to ensure your endpoints are working with other services as expected, and contract tests to ensure your API works according to it’s specifications.

- Observe: check on your API’s performance, behavior, and response time at specified intervals with Postman Monitors.

“With our latest release, we’re making APIs front and center. Now you can link all of your API elements (test, environments, mocks, documentation, and monitors) to an overarching API and view them all in one place. Your API itself is your single, central source of truth,” Stated Abhinav Asthana, CEO and founder of Postman.

Postman 7.1 includes extended schema support. This new functionality means users no longer have to commit to any single API specification format to use Postman. Users can write, edit, or import your API schema to define your API. Postman automatically generates a collection from users’ API schema and imports it into the Postman app, allowing users and teams to build your APIs from the ground up - all in one central place.

Postman 7.1 also adds a new versioning feature that allows users to create and maintain multiple versions of an API simultaneously. Users can carry over collections as needed from the original or create new collections for each version of your API. In addition, users can use version tagging to link API elements like Postman Collections, mock servers, monitors, or variables to any version of your API.

“Previously Postman workflows were organized around collections which stood in as a proxy for the API,” continued Asthana. “But in our latest release, the API is the organizing principle for the requests, test suites, mocks, examples, monitors, and collections that relate to it.”

Postman 7.1 is available now.

Postman 7.1 launches with support for RAML, WADL, OpenAPI, and Swagger 1.0/2.0 types.