Set Up REST Client (Postman) - Hands-on Lab

Before you begin:

This lab was also covered in the Catalog API course. If you already have Postman (or another REST client) installed and set up a sandbox environment with preset request headers, you can skip to step 3 where you will create an API token and update the request header preset.

Make sure you are logging in using the user account with Store Owner permissions. For more information, see the Store API Accounts article in the support portal.

The store hash is the alphanumeric string in the API path between /stores/ and /v3/. This string uniquely identifies this store when sending requests to https://api.bigcommerce.com/

Example: API Path: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/abcd1234/v3/ Store Hash: abcd1234

The store hash can also be found in your Control Panel URL.

Example: Control Panel URL: https://store-abcd1234.mybigcommerce.com/ Store Hash: abcd1234

For the purpose of the labs in this course, you can create one API token with all of the scopes listed below.

If you are working with one specific API you will only need to set the scopes for that API. See the BigCommerce Guide to API Accounts for more information.

A .txt file containing the same credentials will (on most browsers) automatically download to your computer.

There is no way to re-display this pop-up after you select Done to dismiss it. So make sure you store your credentials – either by copying/pasting the contents of each field out of the pop-up, or by keeping the downloaded .txt file. Otherwise, you will need to repeat all the above steps to generate new credentials.

From a security perspective, these credentials are sensitive – please treat them with the same caution that you would treat a private key or root password.

What are environments?

While working with APIs, you will often need to have different setups. For example, your local machine, the development server, or the production API. Environments give you the ability to customize requests using variables. This way you can easily switch between different setups without changing your requests. You won’t have to worry about remembering all those values once they are in Postman. Environments can be downloaded and saved as JSON files and uploaded later.

Source: https://learning.postman.com/docs/sending-requests/environments/managing-environments/

Saving your request header information in a preset will allow you to quickly populate your request headers rather than having to re-enter this information.