Postman is a popular API development and testing tool that is widely used by software developers and testers. It provides an easy-to-use interface to make requests, manage responses, and view request history. In this blog, we will guide you through the process of installing Postman on a Linux machine.
Step 1: Download the Postman Package
The first step in installing Postman is to download the package from the official Postman website. You can download the package by visiting the website and clicking on the “Download” button. Once the download is complete, you will have a tar archive with a name starting with “postman”.
eg:- postman-linux-x64.tar.gz
After downloading the package, open a terminal and navigate to the location where you saved it.
Step 2: Create a directory to store the Postman package
Before we extract the contents of the tar archive, we need to create a directory to store the Postman package. The recommended location is the .local/bin directory inside your home directory. You can create this directory using the following command:
mkdir -p $HOME/.local/bin/
Step 3: Extract the contents of the tar archive
Once the directory is created, we can extract the contents of the tar archive into the .local/bin directory. This can be done using the following command:
tar -xvf postman*.tar.gz -C $HOME/.local/bin/
Step 4: Create a symbolic link
Finally, we need to create a symbolic link to the actual Postman executable located in $HOME/.local/bin/Postman/app/postman. This can be done using the following command:
ln -s $HOME/.local/bin/Postman/app/postman $HOME/.local/bin
Add the location to PATH environment variable:-
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin
Check whether you can run the postman via terminal using the postman command. For that run postman in your terminal.
If there is no error, you can proceed further;
Step 5: Create a Launcher
Now we need to create a desktop entry for Postman. So that the Postman appears in the list of installed applications and can be similarly launched from the GUI like other applications installed on the system.
echo "[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Postman
Exec=$HOME/.local/bin/Postman/app/Postman %U
Icon=$HOME/.local/bin/Postman/app/resources/app/assets/icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;" > ~/.local/share/applications/Postman.desktop
Installing Postman on Linux is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps. With Postman installed, you can start exploring and testing your APIs, saving time and effort in the process.