Native git integration

[prmichaelsen]

Feature Request

Our team uses Postman for quick sanity testing of our APIs and for populating data into various environments to allow us to test certain UI workflows. While we appreciate Postman’s cloud services for managing collections, we would much rather use tools like git to keep our tests and API calls with our central repo. Currently there is good support for CLI testing of collections with tools like newman. This works very well with git. However, importing and exporting our collections to and from Postman GUI every time we make test changes or checkout new changes in git is unwieldly and cumbersome. As Postman tests are text files, it would be very helpful if Postman could automatically read and write collections directly from a source directory without the need to import or export. Many of the other tools in our toolchain integrate seamlessly with git and it would be fantastic if Postman did as well.

[tbuttier]

I totally agree. It would be great to have filesystem integration so we could manage the changes with GIT directly. Moreover, it would be appreciated if no changes were produced just for saving a file.

[kmaster]

+1

[maskaravivek]

+1 This would be useful for us as well :)

[ishepherd]

My #3910 got closed, but I don't think you should bother with Native git integration. Instead, refactor Postman to turn its native storage format into text files. Just like all other dev tools.

If you can pull this off, yes git will integrate easily, and so will grep and jq and the entire universe of file based tools. We will be able to write generators for Postman test collections and then tweak the result in the Postman UI. All kinds of things are possible :)

[Jillxm]

+1 Very important to us. Assuming this feature would include Global variables it would allow source control/integrations for functions which need to be stored as variables.

[ishepherd]

Just make the native storage into text files.

We have perfectly good git clients, and so many other tools besides, which are all currently locked out of Postman, due to your legacy practice of keeping the collections in a private database.

[ishepherd]

While I'm on my soapbox: "text files", plural. The current export generates an entire collection as a single file, this makes large collections extremely difficult for git merging and GitHub pull requests.

[rohit-gohri]

This would really improve Postman as an API testing tool. The current workflow of exporting collections before committing and deleting & importing collections after changing branches is very cumbersome. Anyone have any better workflow suggestions?

Related old issues (linking for others who might stumble from Google):

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/3475
• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/730

[karlbrown-va]

Adding my vote for this. Seems sensible and quite useful to have a 'sync' function that would sync a given collection with its location on disk.

[anna-seredinskaya]

This is the number one feature we desperately need and are waiting for.

[vdespa]

It seems that Postman is taking the approach of integrating Git over the cloud services they offer and not directly from the app.

This involves practically reimplementing version control. This means that only a limited of Git providers will be included, as each needs to be supported individually. We are talking were mostly Github, GitLab and maybe just maybe Bitbucket). So I don't think it will be possible to use your own Git server for syncing Postman collections.

I would have hoped Postman turns more into an IDE like IntelliJ that can work directly with local tools (like Git).

Currently, it looks like the dream of having a native Git integration is dead.

[Jillxm]

Valentin,

My postman collections only (not variables) are currently If currently integrated with our private github server using access tokens to.

Does this email mean that the integrations using access tokens will no longer be supported?

Thanks, Jill

From: Valentin Despa [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 1, 2020 2:01 PM To: postmanlabs/postman-app-support postman-app-support@noreply.github.com Cc: Lancaster, Jill Jill.Lancaster@siriusxm.com; Manual manual@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [postmanlabs/postman-app-support] Native git integration (#3563)

It seems that Postman is taking the approach of integrating Git over the cloud services they offer and not directly from the app.

This involves practically reimplementing version control. This means that only a limited of Git providers will be included, as each needs to be supported individually. We are talking were mostly Github, GitLab and maybe just maybe Bitbucket). So I don't think it will be possible to use your own Git server for syncing Postman collections.

I would have hoped Postman turns more into an IDE like IntelliJ that can work directly with local tools (like Git).

Currently, it looks like the dream of having a native Git integration is dead.

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHubhttps://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fpostmanlabs%2Fpostman-app-support%2Fissues%2F3563%23issuecomment-607403387&data=02%7C01%7Cjill.lancaster%40siriusxm.com%7C6072b2435ace4080a3d608d7d6669fa0%7Cc69f0fed51c54fedbe55ba0d512d25ab%7C0%7C0%7C637213608564939573&sdata=0BD7q6YZrIGI3%2By%2B8sY0dUaFgL09553knW%2FvurGCqWw%3D&reserved=0, or unsubscribehttps://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fnotifications%2Funsubscribe-auth%2FAM7MOKFVKWFT3EOITCYVF2DRKN6NNANCNFSM4D4YV2KQ&data=02%7C01%7Cjill.lancaster%40siriusxm.com%7C6072b2435ace4080a3d608d7d6669fa0%7Cc69f0fed51c54fedbe55ba0d512d25ab%7C0%7C0%7C637213608564939573&sdata=rGerYmDMLdcMbZ7o5mv6TL2qIZ10RjbcoHGP3ZCD2nc%3D&reserved=0.

[matt-ball]

Whilst not native, I would recommend looking at Postman CLI if you'd like to facilitate local development of requests, responses and scripts for Postman.

[vdespa]

@Jillxm - Your current GitLab setup will work just fine. This issue is about a native Git integration which is not the current approach.

[Rafnafnaf]

+1 This is so much of a problem for my team that we are considering changing API testing tool for another one which will work with git more easily.

[prmichaelsen]

Considering this is in the top 50 highest voted issues perhaps it warrants a response from the team

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 8:54 AM Rafnafnaf notifications@github.com wrote:

+1 This is so much of a problem for my team that we are considering changing API testing tool for another one which will work with git more easily.

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[yosadchyi]

+1, it seems to be blocker for using postman as main API testing tool

[AjaySewradj]

How do you vote this ticket up?

We also desperately need file-system integration as described in all the posts above. Any updates on this ticket?

[prmichaelsen]

How do you vote this ticket up?

We also desperately need file-system integration as described in all the posts above. Any updates on this ticket?

It’s been a top issue for years and no official response. It would seem this is not a priority for postman. I would consider a product that’s open source as an alternative.

[tyomo4ka]

There is 1.8k issues in this repo. I guess someone from the team needs to do a bit of grooming :)

I will just make a desperate attempt to bump up this one again.

[arlemi]

Hey everyone! We've added native Git support for Bitbucket and GitHub in Postman v9. Please check this blog post for more info, and update your app to try it out!

[prmichaelsen]

holy shit

[AjaySewradj]

Hey everyone! We've added native Git support for Bitbucket and GitHub in Postman v9. Please check this blog post for more info, and update your app to try it out!

I'm only using 'Collections' in Postman. It doesn't seem that git support is enabled for the Collections. So I'm still stuck exporting the Collections to the filesystem on a regular basis.

So the original issue has not been fixed

[prmichaelsen]

just discovered https://hoppscotch.io/

it's an open source alternative to postman. get rekt postman.

[prmichaelsen]

@AjaySewradj you may be interested in checking out this open source alternative chartered in aug '19: https://hoppscotch.io/

"too little, too late" as far as the implementation of this feature goes. i'm always excited to bail on greedy closed source projects ^-^

[shashankawasthi88]

@prmichaelsen @AjaySewradj @tyomo4ka and others, I am reopening this ticket. We have started working on integration with local file systems. We want to understand your local development workflows. Feel free to schedule a call with us using this link or feel free to drop me a mail at shashank.awasthi@postman.com describing your workflows.

[prmichaelsen]

@shashankawasthi88 here's an example of what I use today and how it works, which is guiding my workflow today: https://blog.bitsrc.io/vs-codes-rest-client-plugin-is-all-you-need-to-make-api-calls-e9e95fcfd85a

[shashankawasthi88]

The postman v10 now allows you to perform all the git workflows from Postman directly. Follow the blogpost to know more.