New DevNet Postman Collection Makes Using APIs Easier

Over the last few months, I have been very privileged to be working with the awesome team over at Postman. Postman is a great tool when exploring RESTful APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) on network/platform devices, or for testing ones you have created yourself. Our two teams have a lot in common, and together we are helping our communities make their infrastructure programmable to interface with applications.

The Cisco DevNet Postman Collection

Postman Collections are simply collections of pre-built APIs. These can be organized into folders, and are an awesome way to group your API requests together so you can save, reuse, and share them with others.

Our DevNet Developer Advocate team has now gathered all our Postman collections, created some new collections, and created the Cisco DevNet Postman Collection. This centralized collection allows the community of engineers to find and use all the great Postman Collections that pertain to their project’s purpose.

 

There is something for everyone!

For those with a focus on security, there is a complete collection of Cisco Security APIs to help developers and engineers understand the various API capabilities of Cisco NGFW, Advanced Malware Protection, Threat Grid, ISE, and Umbrella. It covers useful API features for each of the products and how to properly use them.

For collaboration engineers, there is the Webex Teams API collection. If you’ve used Cisco Webex you know just how easy it is to meet and collaborate with your team members and customers. The DevNet Webex Teams API collection opens up the power of the Webex Platform to anyone seeking to integrate the collaboration benefits of Webex into their applications. The Webex APIs collection gives you easy access to the Webex Platform to build Bots, Integrations, or Guest Issuer apps.

For data center engineers, One of the new collections is the Cisco Intersight, Cisco Intersight includes a RESTful API that supports the OpenAPI standard to provide full programmability and deep integrations with third-party tools and systems. The Cisco Intersight Postman Collection provides a subset of all Intersight API calls. Cisco Intersight is based on the OpenAPI specification and as such a Postman collection can be created directly from the OpenAPI specification.

APIs make life easier for developers and network engineers

There is a massive value to developers here. Developers can be much more productive using an API when they don’t have to start from day one every time they create a new program.  APIs also offer huge benefits to network engineers. One of the biggest benefits of APIs is that they allow the abstraction of functionality between one system and another. An API endpoint decouples the consuming application from the network infrastructure that provides the service.

In all our DevNet Learning Labs and DevNet Express Events that use REST APIs, we kick start the engineer’s journey with an understanding of the basics of consuming REST APIs. Then they know how to use the Postman client to make API calls using Cisco devices such as Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) and Cisco SD-WAN. (And don’t forget, you can put your learning to work trying it out against live infrastructure within the DevNet Sandbox.)

Get Started

If you are new to Postman and using API’s, these DevNet Learning Labs will help you get started:

• What is REST? What is an API?
• Use Postman to interact with REST APIs

Join DevNet to access learning labs, sandboxes, certifications, and keep track of your progress.