ScratchPad

The latest project that I've enjoyed working on has been to learn how to use Postman and to develop a framework that allows us to use an existing Postman collection, and apply it to a new business need. Our existing API automation suite is closely tied to a particular data set only available in a mocked environment. However, the business also needed to be able run some form of automation suite in integrated environments. It was decided that we would use Postman to create solutions for performing the positive and alternate test flows in the integrated test environments. I started on a personal project to see if I could leverage the extensive Postman collection we already had for the functional testing of the API. I was pleased that I was able to create a framework that allowed us to store and easily switch between different settings for users, financial institutions and environments. This eliminated the close association the existing automation suite had with the mocked data set. I was then able to create a mechanism by which we could use an external data file to specify the API calls necessary to perform a list of use-case scenarios as individual user sessions. Incidentally, we also were able to implement a simple mechanism for code reuse that was lacking from Postman. This simple proof of concept was able to extended by other team members to add reporting customised to our needs, and able able to be run periodically from our TFS build server. We now have a dashboard of test results spanning many environments and many clients' particular configurations. Our initial implementation was added to one Postman collection, but recently another team was able to take the framework and apply it to their collection as well, which showed the benefit of designing the framework in a manner that allowed it to be retrofitted to any collection, a goal of what I was attempting to achieve. I'm sorry I'm not in position to share any specific links to the work as its proprietary to Fiserv, but I am thinking about writing a linkedIn article about it in general terms.