Introducing Postman Live Collections for automated documentation

Postman Collections make it easy to document, share, and test APIs, ultimately streamlining a developer’s workflow. Automating the creation and maintenance of collections can make them even more powerful.

Today, we’re introducing Postman Live Collections, an automated way to generate and update Postman Collections for all of your APIs. With Live Collections, Postman can now observe your application’s behavior while you are using it and then build your collections. As the application evolves, so does the collection. Let’s see how Live Collections helped me automate the creation of my own collection and keep it up-to-date.

Live Collections in action

I have a NodeJS application that I am developing. In the past, I would have built the application and then created my collection. With Live Collections, I can automate this by following a few simple steps.

• Create Live Collection

• Download and install the Postman SDK

• Instrument your application

• Watch your Live Collection build and update itself

• Now that I have my collection created for me,  I can view the documentation of the collection and share the same with other collaborators by publishing it to the Public API Network or Private API Network

• I can further create a mock from this collection so that the consumers of my API can use it in their development and testing workflows

Configuration options

• Once I think that my application is in a stable state, I can select the option for the Live Collection to update manually instead of automatically. This allows me to view all updates to this collection and merge only relevant updates. I can even turn off data sync from Live Collections if I don’t want to learn from the usage patterns of my application

Key benefits of Live Collections

Live Collections are a powerful new feature that provide the following benefits:

• Save time: You can automate your collection creation and update every time you make changes to your APIs. Postman will keep it up-to-date, based on the usage patterns of your services.

• Ensure accuracy: By keeping your collections up-to-date with the latest versions of your APIs, you can be sure that your tests and documentation are accurate and reliable.

• Optimize performance: By analyzing the usage patterns of your services, you can identify areas where performance can be optimized and make changes accordingly.

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