cURL is the most used command line tool for making API calls. However, it is a little cumbersome to work directly with curl, since even a simple curl request looks like this:
Postman has a nice UI, which makes it easy to add/remove parameters, changing things is more flexible. Postman also allows users to save requests etc, which cURL is not designed to do. In short, Postman allows a modern, simpler workflow.
The good news is, Postman can help make cURL easier to use. We do that in two ways.
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An easier way to create cURL commands.
You can construct a request in Postman and convert it to cURL using the code snippet generator. Check out the documentation.
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Running cURL commands in a more user-friendly way.
You can import a cURL request into Postman and run it. Here’s the details on how.
If you found this useful, you should also take a look at the other options in the code snipper generator. You can convert a request into many programming languages such as Go, Objective-C, Python, etc.
We aim to make Postman as flexible for your needs as possible. Do let us know if you’ve come up with cool use cases of the code snippet generator!