From First Request to Automated Test Suites in CI/CD

Read before you buy: the PDF here is a free sample — the first 20 pages of the 431-page book (payments, sales and reviews on this demo site are sample data). Get the full e-book at thenexbooks on Gumroad.

Clicking Send is easy. Building API tests your team actually trusts is not.

Most API test suites start as a handful of saved requests and slowly turn into something nobody wants to touch: hard-coded tokens, tests that pass only in one order, assertions that check "status is 2xx" and nothing else, and a CI job everyone has learned to ignore. This book shows you how to do it properly — step by step, with one realistic API you can run on your own machine.

The running example is Trailkit, an outdoor-gear rental marketplace with renters, owners, and admins, searchable listings, a booking workflow with date rules and state transitions, photo uploads, signed webhooks, rate limits, and a consistent error format. Chapter 2 gives you a small practice server, so every request and test in the book works exactly as written.

• 431 pages · 28 chapters + 4 appendices · practice exercises in every chapter
• HTTP for testers, requests, collections, and folders
• Variables, environments, scopes, and handling secrets safely
• Writing tests with pm.test and pm.expect, JSON Schema, headers, and response-time budgets
• Pre-request scripts, dynamic data, and request chaining
• Authentication (API keys, Basic, Bearer, OAuth 2.0) and security-focused tests for roles and permissions
• Data-driven testing with CSV and JSON files
• GraphQL, WebSockets, gRPC, SOAP, file uploads, webhooks, and asynchronous APIs
• Test design: coverage, boundaries, negative cases, and error contracts
• Contract testing with OpenAPI, mock servers, and test data management
• Collection Runner, Newman, the Postman CLI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and reports
• Monitoring, performance-testing basics, collaboration, and maintainable collections
• A complete test strategy case study

Table Of Contents

Part I — API Testing Foundations

• Ch 1 · Why API Testing Matters: The Test Pyramid, Contracts, and Where Postman Fits
• Ch 2 · Setting Up: Postman, Workspaces, and the Trailkit Practice API
• Ch 3 · HTTP for Testers: Methods, Status Codes, Headers, and Bodies
• Ch 4 · Sending Requests in Postman: Params, Bodies, Headers, Cookies, and the Console
• Ch 5 · Collections, Folders, and Organizing Your Work

Part II — Variables, Scripts, and Assertions

• Ch 6 · Variables and Environments: Scopes, Precedence, and Secrets
• Ch 7 · Writing Tests: pm.test, pm.expect, and Chai Assertions
• Ch 8 · Validating Responses: JSON Schema, Headers, Response Time, and Data Types
• Ch 9 · Pre-request Scripts and Dynamic Test Data
• Ch 10 · Request Chaining and Workflows: Passing Data Between Requests

Part III — Authentication and Advanced Requests

• Ch 11 · Authentication: API Keys, Basic, Bearer Tokens, and OAuth 2.0
• Ch 12 · Security-Focused API Tests: Roles, Permissions, and Negative Security Cases
• Ch 13 · Data-Driven Testing with CSV and JSON Files
• Ch 14 · Beyond REST: GraphQL, WebSockets, gRPC, and SOAP in Postman
• Ch 15 · File Uploads, Downloads, Webhooks, and Asynchronous APIs

Part IV — Test Design

• Ch 16 · Designing API Test Suites: Coverage, Equivalence Classes, and Boundaries
• Ch 17 · Negative Testing, Error Contracts, and Edge Cases
• Ch 18 · Contract Testing with OpenAPI: Specs, Schema Validation, and Drift
• Ch 19 · Mock Servers: Testing Against APIs That Do Not Exist Yet
• Ch 20 · Test Data Management: Setup, Teardown, Isolation, and Idempotency

Part V — Automation and CI/CD

• Ch 21 · The Collection Runner: Iterations, Ordering, and Control Flow
• Ch 22 · Command-Line Testing with Newman and the Postman CLI
• Ch 23 · CI/CD Integration: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and Test Reports
• Ch 24 · Monitoring APIs: Scheduled Runs, Smoke Tests, and Alerts
• Ch 25 · Performance Testing Basics: Postman's Performance Runner and When to Reach for k6 or JMeter

Part VI — Teams and Practice

• Ch 26 · Collaboration: Workspaces, Forks, Version Control, and API Documentation
• Ch 27 · Maintainable Collections: Reusable Scripts, Conventions, and Anti-Patterns
• Ch 28 · Case Study: A Complete Test Strategy for the Trailkit API

Appendices

• App A · Postman Scripting Cheat Sheet
• App B · Templates and Snippet Reference
• App C · API Testing Checklist
• App D · Glossary

WHO IT IS FOR
QA engineers and testers moving into API testing and automation, developers who want fast and reliable tests for their own services, SDETs building suites that run in CI/CD, and QA leads designing an API test strategy.

FORMAT
PDF (A4), 431 pages, English, clickable table of contents and PDF bookmarks. 1st Edition, 2026. Published by thenexbooks.

This book is independent and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Postman, Inc. Postman is a trademark of Postman, Inc.

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