Postman Flows: the next generation of software development
In a world of plentiful and well-built APIs, we will have:
- APIs as building blocks that will be available to everyone and everywhere.
- These building blocks will be easily consumable.
- Developers will build faster and better software, and everyone will be able to build and contribute.
The above is taken from The API-First World graphic novel published in 2021. In the same year, Postman became the world’s largest hub for public APIs, making powerful APIs from Microsoft, PayPal, Stripe, Meta, Intel, and Oracle available to over 25 million Postman users spanning every continent across the globe—including Antarctica.
Today, we are one more exciting step closer to unlocking the power of APIs for everyone. Introducing Postman Flows—a visual tool to build software for the API-first world. With Postman Flows, anyone can connect APIs of their web services to build workflows, integrations, and API applications in a visual and collaborative development environment.
Notion is already an early adopter of Postman Flows. “Postman Flows makes prototyping and testing easy. Building connections visually is more intuitive and clear, which results in spending more time building and less time digging through code. I’m excited to see the future of Flows and Notion!” said Sid Verma, a Notion partner engineer, about the benefits of Flows.
Modern software is impossible to build without APIs. The moving parts and peripherals around the act of building logic and user interface take up a substantial amount of effort. To simply get to the part of having a working piece of software on the cloud, engineers today need to consider packaging, deployment, cloud, monitoring, scaling, and securing. APIs make it possible for a good portion of modern software to achieve their goal without these complexities, and that is the very premise of the API-first world. Thus, we set out to bring you a development environment built on top of the pillar of modern application development, APIs.
Every major API resides in the Postman API Network and within Postman workspaces. Postman Flows presents you with an infinite canvas where APIs can be placed as “blocks” that can be connected to have data flow through them. The blocks are purpose-built and chosen as the most expressive set of abstractions needed for the world of API-driven software.
Today, every job and business has multiple API-enabled services that need to talk to each other. This trend forms the backbone of the API economy. People need multiple APIs spanning multiple areas of work to talk to each other as much as they want a diversity of people to collaborate. Hundreds of thousands of users have already created Flows to put their APIs to good use towards this end—creating software that executes a workflow across APIs, analyzes data, and makes decisions with data received from APIs. Users have created Flows to build full-blown integrations by deploying Flows on Postman Cloud. What touched our hearts was to see Postman Flows being adopted by students and educators who bypassed many months of learning that would have been otherwise traditionally needed to achieve the same outcome. The Postman Flows editor experience leads by enabling you to express your ideas while it abstracts away the complexities for greater efficiency. Read our blog post about what some of our users have built and had to say about their Flows.
Go with the Flows today
Build your first Postman Flow with our step-by-step tutorial to make your first API application that you can use every day.
Postman Flows is free to use for up to three users in our Free plan. Beyond three users, Postman Flows is available as an add-on to our annual Professional plan at US$20 per user per month. Learn more about Flows pricing.
Postman Flows is a generation leap in software development. It takes advantage of the latest capabilities of the technological ecosystem to become ever more connected and immersive with makers. The blocks in Postman Flows are conversational, bridging the gap between what you build and how your creations behave—making for a learnable programming experience. The canvas itself is collaborative in nature, simulating a live development experience where everyone on the canvas can see each other’s work in real time. The Flows themselves reside in Postman workspaces, allowing you to keep them in context of your work at all times.
We are excited to see what you build with Postman Flows.
One of the restrictions about postman collections was this. It runs sequentially. You need to tweak the sequential flow in tests with pm.setnextrequest(). But this is not visual and it can only be understood by the coder himself.
I was a long time supporter of merging API with BPMs. Now it seems that postman did an important step into it.
I am very excited to test it.
Flows is an excellent addition to already robust Postman features.
Would like to know what tech is used to build the UI of flows ?! Would you be able to have blog post on the same?
I am trying to build something on similar lines for some of my use cases.
Thanks
Postman Flows herald a new era in software development, promising streamlined workflows and enhanced collaboration. Revolutionizing the development landscape!