[REQ] Reference other request on pre-request script

[stramel]

It would be nice to be able to reference a pre-built login request from another request's pre-request.

[harryi3t]

Can you explain a bit more about what you mean by pre-built login request?

If you meant Sharing javascript functions/variables across scripts, then that should be done by serializing them and storing in some variable (env, global or *local) and then de-serializing then by using eval

Collection script

function commonFunction () {
  ...
}
pm.variables.set('commonFunction', commonFunction.toString())

Request script

eval(pm.variables.get('commonFunction'))
commonFunction()

[stramel]

In my collections of API requests I have already built a login request. I want to use that login request in my pre-request script. I don't want to have to redefine it and maintain it in more than one place.

[harryi3t]

From pre-request script, sending a saved request (one that is already in your collection) is not supported.

pm.sendNextRequest can be used to go from one request to another. If any request needs that loginRequest to be sent before, then put pm.sendNextRequest in the request before it.

As an example, let's say we have a collection with 5 requests out of which 2 requests (r2 & r4) needs a special request to be run before (loginRequest).

Request Name	test-script
r1	pm.setNextRequest('loginRequest') pm.variables.set('goto', 'r2')
r2*
r3	pm.setNextRequest('loginRequest') pm.variables.set('goto', 'r4')
r4*
r5	pm.setNextRequest(null)
loginRequest	let goto = pm.variables.get('goto') pm.setNextRequest(goto)

If you follow this, the order of execution will be

START -> r1 -> loginRequest -> r2 -> r3 ->  loginRequest -> r4 -> r5 -> STOP

If this does not help, please let me know more about your use-case, so that I can suggest some workaround.

[stramel]

This problem is exactly what everyone was wanting solved when we requested PRE-request scripts.

It is useless to have every single request appear as though it is Login and then in the tests have the actual request sent.

[chrisheil]

+1 I am in the same situation. I would love to be able to reference existing requests in the same collection.

Maybe add an optional meta field on each request called "reference key", and anywhere that you need to call that request you could do something like this:

pm.sendPreRequest({{myLoginRequest}})

It would allow your saved login request to remain loosely coupled. You could update the request without needing to touch any other tests that depend on it.

[cmonroeEIS]

• 1 Exactly chrisheil

[ykhodos]

+1 Need ability to call a Postman request from a Pre-request Script, for example to initialize variables or set up the system before the test execution.

[jayarjo]

@harryi3t, In our setup every single request requires preliminary authorisation. At the moment we manually run auth request, that populates global variable and then other requests become functional. Would have been great if request itself invoked a saved auth request (if access token wasn't defined already) and then used an obtained token in authorisation header.

Turning each and every request into a separate collection feels a bit clunky?

[rdemarco08]

I am glad to see there is activity on this subject :)

I have a similar scenario. Our checkout request is dependent on current available inventory. It would be nice to queue up available inventory in the pre-request of the Checkout call. Right now I am aware this can be done with the pm.sendRequest and type out the HTTP request. The workflow would be much more efficient if I could just reference an existing Availability request from the collection.

[sebcharrot]

+1

[ggutenberg]

Not an ideal solution, but I have a workaround.

In the request you want to reference, add the following to the Tests script:

console.log(JSON.stringify(pm.request));

Open the console (View > Show Postman Console) and send your request. Copy the JSON from the console verbatim. In the dependent request, simply add a pm.sendRequest() and paste your JSON object as its argument. Example using the Postman Echo GET Request (prettified JSON to avoid endless horizontal scrolling):

pm.sendRequest({
  "description": {
    "content": "The HTTP `GET` request method is meant to retrieve data from a server. The data\nis identified by a unique URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). \n\nA `GET` request can pass parameters to the server using \"Query String \nParameters\". For example, in the following request,\n\n> http://example.com/hi/there?hand=wave\n\nThe parameter \"hand\" has the value \"wave\".\n\nThis endpoint echoes the HTTP headers, request parameters and the complete\nURI requested.",
    "type": "text/plain"
  },
  "url": {
    "protocol": "https",
    "path": [
      "get"
    ],
    "host": [
      "postman-echo",
      "com"
    ],
    "query": [
      {
        "key": "foo1",
        "value": "bar1"
      },
      {
        "key": "foo2",
        "value": "bar2"
      }
    ],
    "variable": []
  },
  "header": [
    {
      "key": "cache-control",
      "value": "no-cache"
    },
    {
      "key": "Postman-Token",
      "value": "1069648b-fcab-4a67-bf0a-9004719c4c79"
    },
    {
      "key": "User-Agent",
      "value": "PostmanRuntime/7.2.0"
    },
    {
      "key": "Accept",
      "value": "*/*"
    },
    {
      "key": "Host",
      "value": "postman-echo.com"
    },
    {
      "key": "cookie",
      "value": "sails.sid=s%3AmMiIAoQi17Kylyh__5buLn6bMbzFQ9gA.XrOJ96IZ%2BEjJbeVoa8RAPP5ePiWcFuWOHuaXmFBYLb8"
    },
    {
      "key": "accept-encoding",
      "value": "gzip, deflate"
    }
  ],
  "method": "GET",
  "body": {
    "mode": "raw",
    "raw": ""
  }
});

If you're using variables of any sort, you'll have to replace the values in the JSON with something like pm.variables.get('my_variable').

HTH!

[omnipotentkrishna]

https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/4193#issuecomment-417131032 Hi All, I am new to Github. I have question. As above mentioned I have used pre-request script where I have formed request and sent, however i am getting response but my question is how we can store or use response which we are getting from pre-request-Script? I have tried pm.response.json() but as per API doc this methods can be only used in Test methods. Could you anyone please tell me how to save or get response and create it? For me I have to send request in pre-request-script, I will get response, from that response I have to create new JSON string which I want to use request body for another request.

Thanks, Krishna

[jasonycw]

+1 Is there any news of how to do that?

Was preparing some API collections for testing create, edit and delete APIs It will be great to be able to call the create/delete API before the edit one and reusing another saved API will be helpful for initiate those global variables like IDs.

This can make the integration tests with Runner and newman to run much more smoothly.

[pomeh]

This issue looks similar to #882 and #4845. Maybe you'll find some solutions in those threads.

[humbienri]

@ggutenberg thank you for your idea/suggestion! It does seem quite hacky but I think it sorta works. However, I think it works because the cookie is already set in the Headers? If my independent request is an authentication/login request and I need to pass in a username and password in the raw body and those values are actual hard-coded values and not variables as you suggested, then it does work!

However, if I remove the cookie part and try to variablelize the username and password then I cannot get it to work. Were you able to actually use varaibles in your efforts or was that just a suggestion?

Thank you!

[guanyingjie]

Do we solve this problem now? I meet the same question

[hedrickbt]

I have the same issue. I have a login-request that sets a token environment variable. Then each of my other requests uses that environment variable. It would make sense for the other requests to call my login-request first and then token would be set. This supports the DRY principle too.

The workaround of copying the console version of my login-request into each request would work. But, with more than 50 requests in my collection, I would not look forward to the day I needed to change how the login-request worked.

[arlemi]

Hey everyone, we'll be using this issue to consolidate the feedback we've got around that feature request (#697, #4845, #4024).

Existing feedback

Here's the different use-cases for which that feature would be useful:

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/4193#issuecomment-366455074

  In my collections of API requests I have already built a login request. I want to use that login request in my pre-request script. I don't want to have to redefine it and maintain it in more than one place.

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/4193#issuecomment-404566946

  I have a similar scenario. Our checkout request is dependent on current available inventory. It would be nice to queue up available inventory in the pre-request of the Checkout call. Right now I am aware this can be done with the pm.sendRequest and type out the HTTP request. The workflow would be much more efficient if I could just reference an existing Availability request from the collection.

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/697#issuecomment-60250456

  1 - "In the pre-request script for request r1, you check if a condition is true. If true, you fire request r2, set environment variables from the response of r2, and use those variables in r1.", though to elaborate, it may be a data-based condition. Only some values would require the pre-request. 2 - Usability for auth with limited-use tokens. Right now you can set the response to a previous call as the auth token, but it requires actually sending the request. If you have single-use tokens, you need to back up and get a token each time. (Also each token is good for only one API, which clutters collections.) Getting the token in the pre-request script would save a ton of time, especially for the QA team.

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/697#issuecomment-142864208

  I agree, especially if you look at the original request, that outline that chaining scripts, could be to populate environment data for your current/real test. This feature is the logical next step, for progressively build a complete set of environment variables that could be expanded during the real value of a script/test. Take for example a complex, crypto setup where during a login phase, some dynamic/shared secret are built-up, to obtain at each end such common understanding/secrecy and feed back a token on each requests of a postman test suite.

• https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/4845#issuecomment-417023600

  My application is a complex authentication protocol and cookie storage so being able to call a saved "Authentication" request in a pre-request script would prove extremely valuable.

Workarounds

You can use postman.setNextRequest(); along with the Collection Runner to build a workflow with different requests, see Building workflows. You can also use pre-request scripts (at the request or collection level) to send an auth request and save the result in environment variables, here's an example on how to get a bearer token from Auth0 and save it for reuse.

Next steps

If you have a use case that isn't mentioned above please add it as a reply to this post. Otherwise please make use of the 👍 reaction on the first post to show your support for that feature request, but please please avoid replying only with an emoji or a +1 since this clutters the issue and sends unwanted notifications to all participants. 🙏

[kbradl16]

Some more information would be great since we’ve all been waiting for this feature for years now!

Does this mean you will be starting to work on this issue or are you only “consolidating” it?

How is this being prioritized?

When can we expect this to drop?

Are you adding all the use cases up front or incrementally?

[arlemi]

@kbradl16 We're consolidating feedback for now. While we haven't implemented this particular feature, we've been working on other ones that have made it easier to workaround this one (see workarounds in my previous post).

We'll be giving all status updates here.

[lflucasferreira]

I would really appreciate this feature. Today I needed it. So, I am trying to make one working around.

[AlexLombry]

I don't understand really why in Postman we cannot send via Pre Request Script a Postman request without searching a kind of Hack to do it.

It seems that it's a feature a lot of people want.

In my case i need to retrieve a Token that change on each request. I just want to use something like that :

pm.sendRequest({
    url: PostmanRequestUUID, // id of a already saved request: "Get Token For User"
}, function (err, res) {
    pm.environment.set("userToken", res.json().token);
});

Every call i have need to be logged in like that.

[yashraja]

I really really wanted this :-) This would help me in lot of ways to simplify problems.

[nahu90]

Please we need this!

[zeeshanyshaikh]

👍 Yes this is much needed.

My case is i need to get token before every call. I am using oauth2 authentication which requires 2 call as usual. One for getting the grant code and other for getting the actual token and refresh token.

So i have created a folder named "Auth" and added 3 requests (1 extra for refreshing the token). I tried using built in method (Get Access Token Dialog box) but in that case am not getting the whole json in the header, getting only access token.

Along with this request, i would like to have one more request. If this feature is available and can be added to collection pre-scripts then (for my case) Auth folder should be skipped, since i don't want to run those pre-script for my "Auth" requests again. Sounds complex :) but let me know if there is any workaround for my 2nd request (feature request to be specific)

[Totti10as]

Feature must!

[AlexLombry]

For instance it's a feature already working with Paw : https://paw.cloud/docs/auth/jwt I use this now

[KarFan-FS]

I also want this feature

[marcelmrottmann]

I also need this feature

[KasperLK]

Insomnia's request chaining is very easy to setup and even reuse in variables.

[ShaneFromFargo]

Adding my +1 here as well. This would've been very useful for me today.

[lipedias]

+1

[VincentWinckelmans]

+1

[Peter-Schorn]

+1

[PPatel0212]

This feature would be useful

[molteninjabob]

It seems that all of the scenario requests could really be resolved by creating a script repository at the folder, collection, and/or global level. Define a function at any of these levels and allow that function to be called at the level defined and any level below that. It's a pretty simple concept and one that is regularly used as a basic coding best practice. Such scripts would also have regular access through the pm object to any global, environment or collection/script/request level variables that are defined. Not sure why this has taken years to gain traction.

[CriggerMarg]

Please do it, we need it badly

[srbangre]

Following. Have been wanting this feature since 2 years now :(

[tony-li-avepoint]

It's been five years, for five years...Do you know how have I been doing for five years without this feature!!! #697

[elazar]

It's been five years, for five years...Do you know how have I been doing for five years without this feature!!! #697

Duplicating defined requests a lot because you couldn't just reference them?

[mwmcode]

☝️ we have a winner 🏆

[tony-li-avepoint]

It's been five years, for five years...Do you know how have I been doing for five years without this feature!!! #697

Duplicating defined requests a lot because you couldn't just reference them?

OK, I see, just a kidding, don't mind.

[lflucasferreira]

I believe I'm gonna die and this feature will never be implemented. It's already in Insomnia but Postman. Nevertheless, I'll not leave Postman behind.

[molteninjabob]

@shamasis @a85 @preethammavin - Why does this feature request continue to get ignored?

[matvi]

Adding my +1

[jameslgarrett]

I would love to see this feature as well!

[KittyGarrison]

We still want this 🥺🙏

[pyashish]

This is the only think blocking our team using newman!

[4nif]

any good news on this feature request?

[GabrielBarberini]