Swagger vs Postman

The most popular tools in the market for API documentation are Postman and Swagger. These tools are important in the development and maintenance of APIs. They also help in designing, testing and monitoring of APIs.

Even though both Swagger and Postman play crucial role in simplifying the complex processes of designing, testing and documenting APIs but they offer unique functionalities and cater to different stages of the API development lifecycle. 

Postman is primarily used for API testing, monitoring and collaboration where as Swagger mainly focuses on API design, documentation and testing.

We will discuss in detail about Postman and Swaggers and then also see in what way they differ.

Postman is known for its user-friendly interface and flexibility allowing developers to design and test APIs. This API tool is compatible with both, REST and SOAP APIs. Postman sends HTTP request to APIs. The interface supports various request types, including GET, POST, PUT and DELETE, and enables users to define headers, parameters, and request bodies effortlessly. Postman also allows users to create and run collections of requests in a systematic and replicable fashion. Postman ensures the API functions correctly by letting us write and execute test scripts to validate API responses. Postman facilitates real-time testing, performance monitoring, and team collaboration on API projects through the use of monitoring and collaborative tools.

Few of the tools in different categories that integrate with Postman are:

• Jenkin: Jenkin is a popular open-source automation server and Postman can integrate seamlessly with Jenkins through plugins. Using the Postman Jenkin plugin, we can automate API testing as part of continuous integration (CI) pipeline. This integration ensures that APIs remain reliable and functional during development process by scheduling and triggering Postman collections for testing whenever code changes are committed. We can also catch issues early, streamline workflows of testing, and maintain the quality of APIs by incorporating Postman into Jenkins.
  

•  New Relic: New Relic is a platform for application performance monitoring (APM) that offers comprehensive insights into the performance of your applications and services. The integration of Postman with New Relic enables real-time monitoring and analysis of your APIs' performance. We can gain visibility as to how APIs behave by sending Postman test results to New Relic under different conditions and also identify bottlenecks or issues which affect the performance of API. The integration between Postman and New Relic also ensures that APIs deliver the users a seamless experience by proactive troubleshooting.
  

• Github: GitHub is a collaborative and a lead version control platform which integrates with Postman to streamline collaboration and version control during the development of API. GitHub repositories enables us to store Postman collections and environments by making it easy for access, update, and collaboration across teams during the testing and documentation of API.  It also ensures that reduction in conflicts as everyone is working with latest API definitions and thereby enhancing version control and ultimately the efficiency of the API development workflow improves.

Postman is being used in diverse industrial sectors like technology companies for software and service integration, software-as-a-service providers (SaaS) to ensure robust API functionality thus enhancing their platform capabilities, and even peer-to-peer businesses use them for maintaining the reliability of applications.

Let us now look at other tools that integrate with Postman seamlessly:

• Documentation and Knowledge-sharing platforms: Confluence, Swagger(for importing API definitions).

• Version Control Systems: BitBucket, GitLab.

• Testing and Test Automation Tools: JUnit, Selenium.

• Code Editors and IDEs: IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio Code.

• Collaboration and Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Trello.

• API Monitoring and Analytics Tools: Runscope, Datadog.

• Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment(CI/CD) Tools: CircleCI, Travis CI.

• Cloud Platforms and Services: AWS( Amazon Web Services), Azure (Microsoft Azure), Google Cloud Platform.

• Containerization and Orchestration Tools: Kubernetes, Docker.

• API Gateway and Management Platforms: AWS API Gateway, Apigee, Azure API Management.

Swagger is known for its intuitive design framework and lets users design, build, document, and test REST APIs. It is an open-source software which brings automation into API documentation by providing a standardized and machine-readable way to the describe the functionality and structure of an API. The details about endpoints, request and response formats, parameters, authentication methods, and more are included in that. This documentation is written in YAML or JSON format and serves as a contract between API producers and consumers. This ensures that both parties have a clear understanding of how the API will behave.

Swagger encourages consistency and collaboration in the development of API by offering a single source of truth which can be shared easily with developers, testers and other stakeholders.

Swagger emphasizes on structured API documentation so the companies and organizations which prioritizes rigorous API documentation, design-first approaches, and a standardized development process prefer Swagger. These companies often have complex ecosystems with multiple APIs and the ability of Swagger to provide a clear, machine-readable API contract enables maintaining consistency and alignment across development teams.

The companies whose business models revolve around APIs, such as API platforms or API centric startups favor Swagger more as Swagger promotes a design-first approach which allows defining the specification of API early in the development process, thereby ensuring consistency and shared information with partners and clients from the beginning stage.

Swagger integrates with various complementary tools and services enhancing the API development and workflow of documentation.

Some of the tools that integrate with Swagger are:

• SwaggerHub: SwaggerHUb is a collaborative platform which helps in designing, building, and documentation of APIs with Swagger/OpenAPI Specification. It integrates with Swagger Editor and Swagger UI effortlessly, thus providing a centralized environment for teams to work on design and documentation of API. SwaggerHub is an excellent choice for teams which are focused on consistency in API design and documentation as it offers version-control, collaboration features, and ability to publish API documentation.
  

• AWS API Gateway: The integration of Amazon Web Services (AWS) API Gateway with Swagger/OpenAPI specifications simplifies the process of deploying, managing, and securing APIs on the AWS platform. Organizations can harness the advantages of cloud-based API management while ensuring consistent API design using Swagger/OpenAPI definitions.
  

• Apigee: Apigee is a Google Cloud service which supports the management and import of APIs defined using the Swagger. Organizations benefit from advanced management capabilities which include traffic management, security, analytics, and developer portal features by integrating Swagger with Apigee. This also helps in maintaining control and visibility over the APIs while adhering to industry standards.
  

The other tools that can be integrated with Swagger are:

• Swagger Editor: It is a browser-based tool that allows to write, edit, and validate Swagger specifications.

• GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket These version control platforms are used to host files from the Swagger specifications.

• Swagger Codegen: Swagger Codegen can generate client libraries, server stubs, and API documentation based on Swagger specification.  

• Continuous Integration (CI)Tools: Tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI and CircleCI can be configured to validate Swagger specifications automatically, and to generate documentation as part of CI/CD pipeline.

• API Gateways: AWS API Gateway and Azure API management can import and integrate with Swagger.

• Third-Party Documentation Platforms: Tools like ReadMe and Stoplight integrate with Swagger to enhance the presentation and interactivity of API documentation.
  

Now that we have learnt about Swagger and Postman individually. We can move forward and try to understand the key differences between them.

The below table differentiate Postman and Swagger based on key features:

Feature	Postman	Swagger
Primary Goal	Development and Testing of API.	Design, documentation and testing of API.
User Interface	API requests are made using Graphical User Interface(GUI).	API design, documentation and exploration are done using GUI.
Automation	The core feature is Automation of API tests and workflow.	More focused on API design and documentation while supporting automation.
API Monitoring	Has limited monitoring capabilities.	Initially deisgned for API design and documentation, but monitoring can be done with some additional integrations.
Code Generation	Code generation for client application is limited.	Extensive code generation for client SDKs and server stubs.
Supported Methods	Various HTTP methods and custom scripts for testing are supported.	HTTP methods and API structure are provided in a standardized way.
API Ecosystem	Capable of seamlessly integrating with a diverse array of APIs and services.	Concentrates on defining and describing APIs through the utilization of the OpenAPI specification.
Collaboration	Collaboration features are not the main focus but still available.	The main focus is on collaboration and version control.
Interactive Docs	Documentation capabilities are simple.	Comprehensive and interactive documentation.
Industry Usage	Frequently used by testers and developers for API testing.	Used commonly in API design and documentation in large scale projects.

In summary, Swagger is ideal for designing, documenting, and ensuring API consistency thus offering standardized API definition and collaboration features. While Postman stands out with simplified testing and support for automated workflows and is best suited for API testing, automation, and monitoring.

Thank you for taking the time to go through this blog!