The Open Source Community Tooling Built on Postman

I am finally finding time to pick up some old work quantifying the open source that has risen up around API specifications. I am pulling all of the open source tooling available on GitHub when you search for "Postman". A portion of this is open source by Postman, others are collections built by API providers helping developers on-board more quickly, but there is another set of tooling that builds on top of the concept of Postman collection as a specification. Providing an interesting look at what developers are wanting when it comes to integrating the Postman platform into their oeprations. I have a longer list of everything, but here is the cream off the top.

Documentation

  • postmanerator - (forks: 69) (stars: 470) (watchers: 470) - a http api documentation generator that use postman collections
  • docgen - (forks: 52) (stars: 335) (watchers: 335) - transform your postman collection to html/markdown documentation
  • docodile - (forks: 23) (stars: 54) (watchers: 54) - generate html api documentation from a postman collection
  • docman - (forks: 18) (stars: 47) (watchers: 47) - a simple page to generate documentation from postman collections
  • Postdown - (forks: 14) (stars: 36) (watchers: 36) - generate markdown api document from postman.
  • postman2doc - (forks: 5) (stars: 25) (watchers: 25) - convert postman collection.json to markdown/html/docx.

Educational

  • All Things Postman - (forks: 86) (stars: 304) (watchers: 304) - a selection of examples using postman rest client

Conversion

  • apiary2postman - (forks: 25) (stars: 188) (watchers: 188) - tool for generating a postman collection from blueprint api markup or the apiary api
  • API Flow - (forks: 19) (stars: 181) (watchers: 181) - universal data structure and converter for api formats (swagger, raml, paw, postman…)
  • blueman - (forks: 18) (stars: 143) (watchers: 143) - convert a generated api blueprint json file into a postman collection
  • api spec converter - (forks: 76) (stars: 108) (watchers: 108) - this package helps to convert between different api specifications (postman, swagger, raml, stoplight).
  • swagger2 to postman - (forks: 46) (stars: 92) (watchers: 92) - converter for swagger 2.0 json to postman collection
  • postman to k6 - (forks: 20) (stars: 98) (watchers: 98) - converts postman collections to k6 script code
  • swagger2postman - (forks: 14) (stars: 81) (watchers: 81) - create a postman collection from live swagger documentation
  • swaggman - (forks: 19) (stars: 76) (watchers: 76) - convert openapi 3.0 and openapi / swagger 2.0 specs to postman 2.0 collections.
  • postman2jmx - (forks: 26) (stars: 51) (watchers: 51) - postman collection to jmeter jmx file converter
  • swagger2 postman2 - (forks: 27) (stars: 35) (watchers: 35) - module and library to convert swagger 2.0 to a postman collection (v2.0)
  • restdocs to postman - (forks: 5) (stars: 32) (watchers: 32) - converts spring rest docs curl snippets to postman and insomnia collections
  • postman2apiary - (forks: 10) (stars: 22) (watchers: 22) - tool for generating blueprint api markup or the apiary api from a postman collection.

Testing

  • postman bdd - (forks: 22) (stars: 133) (watchers: 133) - a bdd test framework for postman and newman
  • explore with postman - (forks: 67) (stars: 56) (watchers: 56) - various materials for exploratory api testing with postman workshops
  • awesome newman html templ - (forks: 51) (stars: 53) (watchers: 53) - :sunglasses: a newman html report very detailed
  • basic newman slack bot - (forks: 7) (stars: 28) (watchers: 28) - a basic express app that allows you to run postman collections against different environments with newman, straight from slack.
  • openapi auto test - (forks: 1) (stars: 24) (watchers: 24) - automatically reads an openapi 3.0 defintion and generates a postman collection to be used with newman for automated api tests.

Collections

  • postman salesforce apis - (forks: 30) (stars: 124) (watchers: 124) - salesforce api postman collection
  • shopify postman - (forks: 49) (stars: 150) (watchers: 150) - an updated postman collection repository for all shopify api endpoints
  • WhatsApp Business API Pos - (forks: 127) (stars: 141) (watchers: 141) - a postman collection that contains the full set of sample whatsapp business api calls.
  • postman collections - (forks: 38) (stars: 103) (watchers: 103) - postman collections for here rest apis.
  • postman webex - (forks: 16) (stars: 66) (watchers: 66) - postman collections for webex rest apis
  • Tableau_Postman - (forks: 30) (stars: 57) (watchers: 57) - a postman collection for testing and learning tableau server's rest api.
  • apigee management api pos - (forks: 42) (stars: 48) (watchers: 48) - official repo of apigee management api postman collection
  • ArcGIS REST API - (forks: 9) (stars: 37) (watchers: 37) - postman collection for arcgis rest api
  • postman xapi - (forks: 10) (stars: 36) (watchers: 36) - postman collections for webex devices
  • postman esign api collect - (forks: 31) (stars: 23) (watchers: 23) - a easy guide to getting started with docusign's e-signature api using postman. showcases recipes and all rest api endpoints
  • plaid postman - (forks: 15) (stars: 25) (watchers: 25) - postman collection for the plaid api
  • slack api postman - (forks: 9) (stars: 22) (watchers: 22) - repo of slack api postman collection
  • digitalocean postman - (forks: 8) (stars: 22) (watchers: 22) - postman collection for digitalocean api, a placeholder to maintain do api postman collections (not owned by do).

Generation

  • flask2postman - (forks: 12) (stars: 110) (watchers: 110) - :rocket: generate a postman collection from your flask application
  • spring restdocs postman - (forks: 2) (stars: 30) (watchers: 30) - a spring rest docs extension that produces importable postman collections.

Database

  • documentdb postman collec - (forks: 38) (stars: 58) (watchers: 58) - postman collection demonstrating rest access for documentdb

Runtime

  • postman runner - (forks: 37) (stars: 31) (watchers: 31) - a module to run a postman collections.

Authorization

  • http hmac postman - (forks: 35) (stars: 32) (watchers: 32) - a postman prescript for connecting to hmac protected api's

Mocking

  • postman sandbox - (forks: 23) (stars: 34) (watchers: 34) - sandbox for postman scripts to run in nodejs or chrome

Performance

  • postman to loadimpact - (forks: 10) (stars: 26) (watchers: 26) - deprecated - transform postman collections to load impact lua user scenarios

Importer

  • postman importer - (forks: 6) (stars: 22) (watchers: 22) - postman collection importer

I am interested in learning more about each of these open source tools, and learn about what their road map looks like. I am also interested in thinking about each of these areas, and how I can further incentivize innovation in each of these areas. Next I am going to look for other open source tooling within these areas that might not be operating on GitHub. I am also going to do a diff against similar efforts to quantify the open source tooling within OpenAPI, RAML, Swagger, GraphQL, and other layers of the API economy. I am going to publish each of these as snapshots here on the blog, but then brainstorm how I can also publish it as an open source project that others can add to and fork for their own purposes. Right now, I am just working to get a handle on what is going on, while also spending some time defining the landscape a little better for other people I am talking with.