This document provides an introduction to APIs and how to work with them using Postman. It defines APIs as interfaces that allow software and services to communicate with each other. The presenter explains how APIs allow developers to access data from services like Google and Twitter without needing to build the underlying code. The document outlines common API methods like GET, POST, PUT and DELETE and discusses how to structure requests with endpoints, parameters, headers and body data. It promotes Postman as a tool for creating, sending and testing API requests and responses with status codes, headers and body content. Resources for continuing API learning with Postman are provided.

1. APIs 101 with
Postman
Learn API essentials

2. Postman Student Expert
GDSC Lead
Pranay Narang
@pranay-narang
Who I am

3. Agenda
1 Intro to APIs and Postman
2 Requests and responses
3 Trying things out
4 Follow-up resources
5 Q&A
go.postman.co/build

4. APIs: A Digital Restaurant
Client Server

5. What’s an API?
And why should I use one?
● Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow
services to communicate with each other
● Software has become more complex and collaborative
over the years. Developers no longer need to create
every service from scratch.
● APIs allow developers to access data from a service (like
Google or Twitter) without any knowledge of how the
codebase has been implemented.

6. APIs: A bit Technical

7. There’s an API for everything
Everything
● The Cat API
● OpenWeatherMap
● Genius
● Discord
● Youtube-to-MP3
● Spotify
● Twitter
● Facebook
● Google
● And so many more!

8. APIS TURN SOFTWARE INTO LEGO® BRICKS

9. More than 500,000 organizations & 13 Million developers use Postman
98%
of Fortune 500
Organizations use Postman
65%
of Global 2000
Organizations use Postman
Postman is a collaborative API development platform that simplifies
creating, using, and testing APIs with a UI
What is Postman?

10. Working APIs: Then and Now
cURL Command Line Postman

11. Requests and Responses

12. Request-Response Pattern
Client Server
Request
Response
Resources
Services
Network
API

13. Making Requests
The three ingredients to
make a request:
● Method (GET, POST, etc)
● Address/Endpoint (URL)
● Path
How we interact with the API

14. Requests - Methods and Endpoints
Method
GET Retrieve information
POST Send information
PUT/PATCH Update information
DELETE Delete information
address of the server
Bare minimum for a request
https://www.google.com/search
The scheme of
the request
Host
Path
Protocol
destination where
request can be heard
and executed

15. Specifying Detail
Building your requests
● Parameters
○ In the query
● Authorization
● Headers and body
○ Data types

16. Requests - Body
The data payload
● Optional, but often supplied
with POST and PUT requests
● Data types
○ form data
○ JSON
○ text
○ HTML
○ XML
○ files
○ GraphQL
○ … and more!
{
“name”: “Jane Doe”,
“email”: “janedoe@email.com”,
“birthYear”: 1970
}
JSON

17. Receiving Responses
Response elements
● Status codes (200 OK, 201
Created, 404 Not found)
● Headers
● Accessing body data

18. Follow Along
Navigate to and fork
https://tinyurl.com/3vt73u4c

19. Recap
We learned request essentials to
retrieve and update API data:
● Methods
● Addresses
● Parameters
● Authorization
● Body data

20. Continue Learning APIs as a Student
Expert
Student Expert certification indicates that you are proficient in the essential
skills involved in building and testing API requests in Postman, including:
● Sending more sophisticated requests in Postman.
● Editing documentation for a collection.
● Writing basic test scripts.
● Running collections, passing data between requests, and
scripting request execution order.
● Have the option to become a Student Leader in your
community

21. Postman Student Expert
Apply here: https://bit.ly/postman-student-program

22. Win
Amazing
Swag

23. Blog writing competition!
Write what you learned during the
session on your favorite platform like
medium or dev.to
Use #PostmanStudent #PostmanAPI
Send it to us, and we’ll send cool swag to
the coolest blog
Submit your blog URL to organizers
1 2

24. Share your learnings with
#PostmanStudent

25. Resources
learning.postman.com
Learning Center
explore.postman.com
API Network
community.postman.com
Forum

26. Q&A

27. Thanks for coming!
Have a question we didn’t cover? Email me at [your email here]
Tell us how the workshop went:
<Replace with feedback url>