Adventures with Postman: Dynamic Variables

Dynamic variables allow you to randomly generate values for your Postman requests, e.g. First Name and Company Name.

Postman dynamic variables include:

• Common
• Text, Numbers and Colors
• Internet and IP Addresses
• Names
• Profession
• Phone, Address and Location
• Images
• Finance
• Business
• Catchphrases This is a fun one!
• Databases
• Dates
• Domains, Emails and Usernames
• Files and Directories
• Stores
• Grammar
• Lorem Ipsum

So what is the easiest less difficult way to do this?

Let’s Open Postman.

Create a new request.

For this example, I have a POST request that creates a new user.

I want to generate random values for id, name and email.

As far as an email goes, I will use my Gmail account so I can use the plus sign hack, e.g. GMAIL_USER_NAME+name@gmail.com.

Select the Pre-request Script tab and add the following code:

I create a random name using the Postman dynamic variables for {{$randomFirstName}} and {{$randomLastName}}.

I then remove the space between the name so I can build the email address to make use of my Gmail account.

Select the Body and add the following code:

The {{$guid}} syntax uses Postman’s common dynamic variables.

I add the dynamic variables for name and email using the curly brace syntax.

Run the request, and I receive the following response:

That’s it!

Simple way to create fake data that is a bit meaningful than random numbers and unique identifiers.