04_preSetHeaders.md

Preset Headers

For this example we will be looking a bit closer at the Preset Headers feature. This will be concentrating on the feature as a stand alone item, we will be working with Request Headers in the next example but I wanted to highlight this as particular feature that could save you some time.

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Who likes to do the same repetitive things over and over?! Not me. That's why I'm a fan of the Preset Headers feature in Postman. Most of the requests that we will send will have a selection of Headers. These can provide Authorization details, Accepted data formats, Valid API Versions, etc. We'll be using some of these in future requests.

In order to get to the feature and start creating Presets, we need to open it up. This can be done by the following these steps:

• Select the Headers tab in the Request Builder section
• Press the Presets dropdown to the right of the application, under the Save button
• Select Manage Presets, this will display the Manage Header Presets dialog box
• Press the Add button to create a new Preset

Once the steps above are followed, we can start adding data to our preset.

• Give the header preset a name (I've called mine Restful_Booker_Preset_Headers)
• Add some headers of your choice into the fields as Key/Value pairs
• Once you're finished, Press the Add button

Here's an example of what I've added to mine. As you can you see, the Preset values can contain variables using the {{myVar}} syntax, we learnt how these work in a previous lesson.

There's a handy auto-complete feature within the Headers section, this will present you with a pre-defined list containing most of the commonly used request headers. The clip below shows this feature in action...very cool! This feature is also available when creating your pre-sets headers.

Using Bulk Insert

As much as the Presets save you time, you're still entering the key/value pairs one by one. Thankfully, these can be bulk loaded as plain text, as long as the value is separated by a Colon. The text below shows the same values as I added one by one previously as key/value pairs - Let's look at how to bulk enter these values.

accept:application/json
content-type:application/json
Authorization:Bearer 123456
myCustomKey:{{myCustomValue}}

• Open a Preset in the Manage Header Presets dialog box by selecting it from the list or creating a new one
• Press the Bulk Edit button, this will give you a text area with some usage instructions
• Paste the example text from above into the text area
• Select the Key-Value Edit option to see how the headers look in that format
• If you're happy, Press Add or Update, depending if you're creating or editing a existing Preset

Using the Preset Headers

So we have some shiny new Preset Headers created and now we'd like to start using these in the requests that were making to our API endpoints. This is very simple...

• In the Headers section of the Request Builder, Press the Presets dropdown
• Select the Headers that you would like to use in the request (We will use the Restful_Booker_Preset_Headers Preset)
• Once selected you will see the headers populated in the main Headers section

That's a quick introduction to the Preset Headers feature, in the next examples we will start using Headers within our requests to the Restful-Booker API.

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