In this example we will be looking a bit closer at the Collection Runner which allows us to run multiple requests.
The Collection Runner is where things start to get a whole lot more interesting - It's where you will start to automate the running of the requests that you have built up in the Collection folders. With the click of a single button, you will see all the requests execute before your very eyes.
The Collection Runner itself offers loads of different features and we will be moving on to them in a later example but for now, we will just go over the basics, to get you going and become more familiar with that part of the Postman application.
With Postman always being super useful, It provides you with multiple options for opening the Collection Runner. Each person will have their own method of doing this, it's completely up to you, they all ultimately achieve the exact same thing.
On the main application view there are a series of buttons in the top left of the screen, by selecting the Runner button, this will open the Collection Runner in a new window. To the right of this button you will see a file type icon, selecting this will give you a dropdown list of options - Select the Runner Window option to open the Collection Runner in a new window.
Another method of accessing the Runner, is straight from the Collection folder itself.
By selecting the arrow icon at the side of the Collection folder, this opens a new panel to the right of that folder. Select the blue Run button - This will open a new window, the Collection folder will be the collection in view on this newly opened window. This opening method is slightly more targeted than the rest, as those other methods all open the Runner with all the Collections in view so there are a couple extra steps involved to get to the one you require.
Finally, for those people who have no time to waste clicking buttons on the UI - The Runner can be opened by simply using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+R.
To keep this a very basic introduction to the Runner, we're going to use the Restful_Booker_Collection that we have been building up during these examples. This Collection contains lots of different requests with a few basic Tests included - This is going to be perfect to demonstrate the core functionality of the Runner.
With the Runner open in a new window, we can select the Collection that we require from the list available. If you only have a couple of Collections created, it's easy to just select the one that you want to run from the list but if you have multiple Collections, you can use the Search feature to filter out the unwanted Collections. As you start to type, you will start to see the list being auto-filtered. Once you see the one you require, select this and you will see the sub-folders/requests contained within the Collection.
So we have that Collection ready to go....but first we need to set the Environment file, just like if we are sending our requests from the main application, we have added those {{...}} syntax placeholders in multiple places - If we were to start the Runner without setting the Environment file first, this wouldn't really know what variables we are trying to reference so it would fail straight away.
Setting this is simple, similar to how we set the Environment file in the main application, we just simply select it from the dropdown menu in the Runner and we are good to go!
We have a couple of other options open to us on the Runner:
- Iterations
- Delay
- Log Responses
- Data
- Persist Variables
For this example will we take a look at the Iterations, Delay and Log Responses. The Data option is something that we will cover in a later example, this gives us the ability to drive the requests using data from an external JSON or CSV file - That is super useful and we'll be looking at the soon.
The Persist Variables checkbox will do just that if you have it ticked, this will change all the Environment and Global that you're using in the Collection run, which is not great if you're running the Collection multiple times and you want to reuse the same variables in your requests. By default, Persist Variables is checked the first time you open the Collection Runner. If you do not want variables to be updated during the run, deselect the Persist Variables checkbox.
The Iterations option is hopefully quite self explanatory, This setting determines the number of times the selected Collection or sub-folder will be executed during the run. It's default setting is 1 so that will just run through the Collection once. By increasing the value in the Iterations option, we will tell the Runner to run the Collection X amount of times.
In the clip below, you can see that the Iterations value has been set to 5 - This is telling the Runner to execute the requests in the Collection/Sub-folder five times.
The Delay option will add a wait time between each requests execution, this value is milliseconds so if we add 2000 this will add a 2 second delay between each request in the Collection. The runner executes each query in the collection instantly so if you need to add some extra time for a downstream action to happen before a subsequent query is run, this feature gives you that option.
In the clip below, the Delay value has been set to 3000 milliseconds so this will place a 3 second delay or wait time between the requests being executed.
The Log Responses option allows you to view the request/response bodies and headers for your requests in the Run Results section, we will be taking a look at what this looks like next so I won't go into any real detail here. This is a great option for debugging the requests that have been run but it can also impact performance, if you're running larger Collections.
So let's run our first Collection in the Runner - We will select the Restful_Booker_Collection from the list of options and set the Restful_Booker_Environment file then we'll start the run.
As you can see from the clip, running small Collections is pretty quick. Not only did the Runner run multiple requests in one click, we also run our Tests. On this occasion, we checked 18 different things that we had specified in our requests.
Once the Runner has worked its way through our Collection of requests we're presented with the results of that run. The section contains lots of information that I will run through but to not completely blitz your minds, I'll save some of the features like Export Results for a later example.
We have several places that give us a quick visual indication of the state of the Collection run, In the top left of the Run Results section we have a breakdown of the number of Tests that have been run and a Passed/Failed summary. Along with this test summary, we can see the name of the Collection that has been run and the name of the Environment file that has been used during that run.
The Run Results section will also tell you which Tests were run against which requests and the out come of these, be it Passed or Failed.
We mentioned the Log Responses option briefly, this is a great feature and helps us to drill down into the Collection Runner requests. In the main Postman UI it's easy to see the response headers and body when making single requests but it's always been slightly more difficult to see this as part of a Collection run.
Now we can - In the Run Results section, select a request by clicking on the name, this displays a dialog box with different pieces of information all about the request. The URL and the Headers and Body for both the Request and the Response can be viewed here, if you have selected that the Runner logs responses for all requests.
A example of the information that you can get from this feature can be seen below, this has been very useful when dynamically creating data to send in a POST request - It gives you information on exactly what's been sent through in the request.
Each Collection or Sub-folder that has been run will appear in the Recent Run list, each of these runs can be selected and the information will be displayed in the Run Results section.
From the Recent Runs section, we can delete the runs that we no longer need to see in the list. This is done by simply highlighting the run and clicking the rubbish bin icon. This deletes the run straight away so ensure that this is want you want to do.
So that's it for this example, this was a very brief look at the Collection Runner and give you an insight into how you can run multiple requests in a single button click. We will be starting to look closer at the Runner in the next examples and seeing how we can use JSON and CSV files to inject data into our requests.