Sending GET Requests with Python Requests using Postman

Postman is a popular API testing tool that allows you to easily make HTTP requests. When building an application that consumes APIs, it can be extremely useful for testing and prototyping purposes.

In this article, we'll walk through making a simple GET request using Python's requests library and Postman. We'll see how to set up the request in Postman and view the response. Then we'll look at the Python code to make the same request and process the JSON response.

Setting up the GET Request in Postman

First, we'll want to create a new request in Postman. Select "GET" as the request method and enter the URL you want to make the request to. For example:

https://api.example.com/users

This will retrieve a list of users from the API.

Next, click "Send" to make the GET request. Postman will display the response body underneath. We can see the returned list of users in JSON format.

Making the GET Request with Python Requests

Now let's look at how to make this same GET request using Python. The requests library makes this very straightforward:

import requests

url = 'https://api.example.com/users'
response = requests.get(url)
data = response.json()

print(data) 

We import requests, set the API URL to a variable, make the GET request, convert the response to JSON format, and print out the data.

With just a few lines of code, we've replicated the GET request from Postman. The requests library handles all the nitty gritty details of formatting the request, handling the response, and parsing the JSON.

Using Postman in combination with Python requests allows for quick and easy API testing. We can prototype requests in Postman and then easily translate them into Python code for our applications. This workflow can speed up API integration and cut down debugging time.