Exploratory Testing of an HTTP REST API with Postman and Fiddler proxy

workaround for postman proxy issue shown in this video- start proxy first, check browser sends traffic through proxy, then start postman pointing at proxy. I'm not sure if electron didn't shut down properly, or what. But when I reboot, and started in that order, Postman worked through proxy fine.
A short exploratory testing session on a REST API running locally using Postman and Fiddler.
This session was a simple exploratory testing session based around the documentation supplied by the REST API application.
Postman v 5 failed to respond to the `--proxy-server=localhost:8888` command line option - later investigation revealed that Postman still supports --proxy-server so I don't know what caused that issue in this video
Postman v 5 can use proxies that act as default system proxy e.g. Fiddler or Charles
Using `Accept` header to change the content format of the response payload
Content Type validation of payloads in Postman
using different HTTP Verbs from Postman
Save requests in Postman to build up a 'collection' of requests
using Basic Auth in Postman requests
Pretty print payloads in JSON and XML in Postman
Using examples in documentation as test data
Why we should create custom data that makes testing self-documenting
405 is returned with a Method is not valid
201 returned on POST messages which create entities
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[@letsreadtogether6942]

Thanks for the video. I just wanted to share that if we open console window in postman , we will see all the attributes sent in request which means that there will be no requirement to set up a proxy.

[@EvilTester]

The console can help. But I only trust the proxy :)

[@amitwertheimer7762]

Hi, I have a couple of questions: 1. I could see you doing a lot of things, sending some data to the application. was there a reason for sending the particular input you did? 2. I can see why send traffic through ZAP, as it would point to a lot of stuff (for instance, it would flag revealing "jetty" as your server in the returning headers, which in some contexts is an issue), but apart from painting errors in red, was setting up fiddler actually worth it? Also, I've heard that there's fiddler for mac now, not sure if it is the default proxy or not.

[@EvilTester]

1) I just wanted simple valid data - no other reason 2) Without the proxy I can't see the actual messages and responses, I find that essential - also I can see in time order the requests and responses sent, also I can save them out as a session for documenting my work - worth it for me. I haven't tried fiddler for mac - I use Charles instead when on a mac

[@amitwertheimer7762]

thanks!