pfreitag / newman

Newman is a command-line collection runner for Postman

Newman v5 has been released. Check the migration guide and changelog for more details.

Manage all of your organization's APIs in Postman, with the industry's most complete API development environment.

newman _{the cli companion for postman}

Newman is a command-line collection runner for Postman. It allows you to effortlessly run and test a Postman collection directly from the command-line. It is built with extensibility in mind so that you can easily integrate it with your continuous integration servers and build systems.

Table of contents

1. Getting Started
2. Usage
   1. Using Newman CLI
   2. Using Newman as a Library
   3. Using Reporters with Newman
3. Command Line Options
   1. newman-options
   2. newman-run
   3. SSL
   4. Configuring Proxy
4. API Reference
   1. newman run
   2. Run summary object
   3. Events emitted during a collection run
5. Reporters
   1. Configuring Reporters
   2. CLI Reporter
   3. JSON Reporter
   4. JUnit Reporter
   5. HTML Reporter
6. External Reporters
   1. Using External Reporters
   2. Creating Your Own Reporter
7. File Uploads
8. Using Newman with the Postman API
9. Using Newman in Docker
10. Migration Guide
11. Compatibility
12. Contributing
13. Community Support
14. License

Getting started

To run Newman, ensure that you have Node.js >= v10. Install Node.js via package manager.

Installation

The easiest way to install Newman is using NPM. If you have Node.js installed, it is most likely that you have NPM installed as well.

$ npm install -g newman

This installs Newman globally on your system allowing you to run it from anywhere. If you want to install it locally, Just remove the -g flag.

Using Homebrew

Install Newman globally on your system using Homebrew.

$ brew install newman

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Usage

Using Newman CLI

The newman run command allows you to specify a collection to be run. You can easily export your Postman Collection as a json file from the Postman App and run it using Newman.

$ newman run examples/sample-collection.json

If your collection file is available as an URL (such as from our Cloud API service), Newman can fetch your file and run it as well.

$ newman run https://www.getpostman.com/collections/631643-f695cab7-6878-eb55-7943-ad88e1ccfd65-JsLv

For the complete list of options, refer the Command Line Options section below.

Using Newman as a Library

Newman can be easily used within your JavaScript projects as a Node.js module. The entire set of Newman CLI functionality is available for programmatic use as well. The following example runs a collection by reading a JSON collection file stored on disk.

const newman = require('newman'); // require newman in your project

// call newman.run to pass `options` object and wait for callback
newman.run({
    collection: require('./sample-collection.json'),
    reporters: 'cli'
}, function (err) {
	if (err) { throw err; }
    console.log('collection run complete!');
});

For the complete list of options, refer the API Reference section below.

Using Reporters with Newman

Reporters provide information about the current collection run in a format that is easy to both: disseminate and assimilate. Reporters can be configured using the -r or --reporters options. Inbuilt reporters in newman are: cli, json, junit, progress and emojitrain.

CLI reporter is enabled by default when Newman is used as a CLI, you do not need to specifically provide the same as part of reporters option. However, enabling one or more of the other reporters will result in no CLI output. Explicitly enable the CLI option in such a scenario. Check the example given below using the CLI and JSON reporters:

$ newman run examples/sample-collection.json -r cli,json

For more details on Reporters and writing your own External Reporters refer to their corresponding sections below.

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Command Line Options

newman [options]

• -h, --help
  Show command line help, including a list of options, and sample use cases.

• -v, --version
  Displays the current Newman version, taken from package.json

newman run <collection-file-source> [options]

• -e <source>, --environment <source>
  Specify an environment file path or URL. Environments provide a set of variables that one can use within collections. Read More

• -g <source>, --globals <source>
  Specify the file path or URL for global variables. Global variables are similar to environment variables but have a lower precedence and can be overridden by environment variables having the same name.

• -d <source>, --iteration-data <source>
  Specify a data source file (CSV) to be used for iteration as a path to a file or as a URL. Read More

• -n <number>, --iteration-count <number>
  Specifies the number of times the collection has to be run when used in conjunction with iteration data file.

• --folder <name>
  Run requests within a particular folder/folders or specific requests in a collection. Multiple folders or requests can be specified by using --folder multiple times, like so: --folder f1 --folder f2 --folder r1 --folder r2.

• --working-dir <path>
  Set the path of the working directory to use while reading files with relative paths. Default to current directory.

• --no-insecure-file-read
  Prevents reading of files situated outside of the working directory.

• --export-environment <path>
  The path to the file where Newman will output the final environment variables file before completing a run.

• --export-globals <path>
  The path to the file where Newman will output the final global variables file before completing a run.

• --export-collection <path>
  The path to the file where Newman will output the final collection file before completing a run.

• --timeout <ms>
  Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for the entire collection run to complete execution.

• --timeout-request <ms>
  Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for requests to return a response.

• --timeout-script <ms>
  Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for scripts to complete execution.

• -k, --insecure
  Disables SSL verification checks and allows self-signed SSL certificates.

• --ignore-redirects
  Prevents newman from automatically following 3XX redirect responses.

• --delay-request
  Specify the extent of delay between requests (milliseconds).

• --bail [optional modifiers]
  Specify whether or not to stop a collection run on encountering the first test script error.
  Can optionally accept modifiers, currently include folder and failure.
  folder allows you to skip the entire collection run in case an invalid folder was specified using the --folder option or an error was encountered in general.
  On the failure of a test, failure would gracefully stop a collection run after completing the current test script.

• -x, --suppress-exit-code
  Specify whether or not to override the default exit code for the current run.

• --color <value>
  Enable or Disable colored CLI output. The color value can be any of the three: on, off or auto(default).
  With auto, Newman attempts to automatically turn color on or off based on the color support in the terminal. This behaviour can be modified by using the on or off value accordingly.

• --disable-unicode
  Specify whether or not to force the unicode disable option. When supplied, all symbols in the output will be replaced by their plain text equivalents.

• --global-var "<global-variable-name>=<global-variable-value>"
  Allows the specification of global variables via the command line, in a key=value format. Multiple CLI global variables can be added by using --global-var multiple times, like so: --global-var "foo=bar" --global-var "alpha=beta".

• --env-var "<environment-variable-name>=<environment-variable-value>"
  Allows the specification of environment variables via the command line, in a key=value format. Multiple CLI environment variables can be added by using --env-var multiple times, like so: --env-var "foo=bar" --env-var "alpha=beta".

• --verbose
  Show detailed information of collection run and each request sent.

SSL

Client Certificates

Client certificates are an alternative to traditional authentication mechanisms. These allow their users to make authenticated requests to a server, using a public certificate, and an optional private key that verifies certificate ownership. In some cases, the private key may also be protected by a secret passphrase, providing an additional layer of authentication security.

Newman supports SSL client certificates, via the following CLI options:

Using a single SSL client certificate

• --ssl-client-cert
  The path to the public client certificate file.

• --ssl-client-key
  The path to the private client key (optional).

• --ssl-client-passphrase
  The secret passphrase used to protect the private client key (optional).

Using SSL client certificates configuration file (supports multiple certificates per run)

• --ssl-client-cert-list
  The path to the SSL client certificate list configuration file (JSON format). See examples/ssl-client-cert-list.json.

This option allows setting different SSL client certificate according to URL or hostname. This option takes precedence over --ssl-client-cert, --ssl-client-key and --ssl-client-passphrase options. If there is no match for the URL in the list, these options are used as fallback.

Trusted CA

When it is not wanted to use the --insecure option, additionally trusted CA certificates can be provided like this:

• --ssl-extra-ca-certs
  The path to the file, that holds one or more trusted CA certificates in PEM format

Configuring Proxy

Newman can also be configured to work with proxy settings via the following environment variables:

• HTTP_PROXY / http_proxy
• HTTPS_PROXY / https_proxy
• NO_PROXY / no_proxy

For more details on using these variables, refer here.

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API Reference

newman.run(options: object , callback: function) => run: EventEmitter

The run function executes a collection and returns the run result to a callback function provided as parameter. The return of the newman.run function is a run instance, which emits run events that can be listened to.

Parameter	Description
options	This is a required argument and it contains all information pertaining to running a collection. Required Type: object
options.collection	The collection is a required property of the options argument. It accepts an object representation of a Postman Collection which should resemble the schema mentioned at https://schema.getpostman.com/. The value of this property could also be an instance of Collection Object from the Postman Collection SDK. As string, one can provide a URL where the Collection JSON can be found (e.g. Postman Cloud API service) or path to a local JSON file. Required Type: object|string PostmanCollection
options.environment	One can optionally pass an environment file path or URL as string to this property and that will be used to read Postman Environment Variables from. This property also accepts environment variables as an object. Environment files exported from Postman App can be directly used here. Optional Type: object|string
options.globals	Postman Global Variables can be optionally passed on to a collection run in form of path to a file or URL. It also accepts variables as an object. Optional Type: object|string
options.iterationCount	Specify the number of iterations to run on the collection. This is usually accompanied by providing a data file reference as options.iterationData. Optional Type: number, Default value: 1
options.iterationData	Path to the JSON or CSV file or URL to be used as data source when running multiple iterations on a collection. Optional Type: string
options.folder	The name or ID of the folder/folders (ItemGroup) in the collection which would be run instead of the entire collection. Optional Type: string|array
options.workingDir	The path of the directory to be used as working directory. Optional Type: string, Default value: Current Directory
options.insecureFileRead	Allow reading files outside of working directory. Optional Type: boolean, Default value: true
options.timeout	Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for the entire collection run to complete execution. Optional Type: number, Default value: Infinity
options.timeoutRequest	Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for requests to return a response. Optional Type: number, Default value: Infinity
options.timeoutScript	Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for scripts to return a response. Optional Type: number, Default value: Infinity
options.delayRequest	Specify the time (in milliseconds) to wait for between subsequent requests. Optional Type: number, Default value: 0
options.ignoreRedirects	This specifies whether newman would automatically follow 3xx responses from servers. Optional Type: boolean, Default value: false
options.insecure	Disables SSL verification checks and allows self-signed SSL certificates. Optional Type: boolean, Default value: false
options.bail	A switch to specify whether or not to gracefully stop a collection run (after completing the current test script) on encountering the first error. Takes additional modifiers as arguments to specify whether to end the run with an error for invalid name or path. Available modifiers: folder and failure. eg. bail : ['folder'] Optional Type: boolean|object, Default value: false
options.suppressExitCode	If present, allows overriding the default exit code from the current collection run, useful for bypassing collection result failures. Takes no arguments. Optional Type: boolean, Default value: false
options.reporters	Specify one reporter name as string or provide more than one reporter name as an array. Available reporters: cli, json, junit, progress and emojitrain. Optional Type: string|array
options.reporter	Specify options for the reporter(s) declared in options.reporters. e.g. reporter : { junit : { export : './xmlResults.xml' } } e.g. reporter : { html : { export : './htmlResults.html', template: './customTemplate.hbs' } } Optional Type: object
options.color	Enable or Disable colored CLI output. Available options: on, off and auto Optional Type: string, Default value: auto
options.sslClientCert	The path to the public client certificate file. Optional Type: string
options.sslClientKey	The path to the private client key file. Optional Type: string
options.sslClientPassphrase	The secret client key passphrase. Optional Type: string
options.sslClientCertList	The path to the client certificate configuration list file. This option takes precedence over sslClientCert, sslClientKey and sslClientPassphrase. When there is no match in this configuration list, sslClientCert is used as fallback. Optional Type: string|array
options.sslExtraCaCerts	The path to the file, that holds one or more trusted CA certificates in PEM format. Optional Type: string
options.newmanVersion	The Newman version used for the collection run. This will be set by Newman
callback	Upon completion of the run, this callback is executed with the error, summary argument. Required Type: function

newman.run~callback(error: object , summary: object)

The callback parameter of the newman.run function receives two arguments: (1) error and (2) summary

Argument	Description
error	In case newman faces an error during the run, the error is passed on to this argument of callback. By default, only fatal errors, such as the ones caused by any fault inside Newman is passed on to this argument. However, setting abortOnError:true or abortOnFailure:true as part of run options will cause newman to treat collection script syntax errors and test failures as fatal errors and be passed down here while stopping the run abruptly at that point. Type: object
summary	The run summary will contain information pertaining to the run. Type: object
summary.error	An error object which if exists, contains an error message describing the message Type: object
summary.collection	This object contains information about the collection being run, it's requests, and their associated pre-request scripts and tests. Type: object
summary.environment	An object with environment variables used for the current run, and the usage status for each of those variables. Type: object
summary.globals	This object holds details about the globals used within the collection run namespace. Type: object
summary.run	A cumulative run summary object that provides information on . Type: object
summary.run.stats	An object which provides details about the total, failed, and pending counts for pre request scripts, tests, assertions, requests, and more. Type: object
summary.run.failures	An array of failure objects, with each element holding details, including the assertion that failed, and the request. Type: array.<object>
summary.run.executions	This object contains information about each request, along with it's associated activities within the scope of the current collection run. Type: array.<object>

newman.run~events

Newman triggers a whole bunch of events during the run.

newman.run({
    collection: require('./sample-collection.json'),
    iterationData: [{ "var": "data", "var_beta": "other_val" }],
    globals: {
        "id": "5bfde907-2a1e-8c5a-2246-4aff74b74236",
        "name": "test-env",
        "values": [
            {
                "key": "alpha",
                "value": "beta",
                "type": "text",
                "enabled": true
            }
        ],
        "timestamp": 1404119927461,
        "_postman_variable_scope": "globals",
        "_postman_exported_at": "2016-10-17T14:31:26.200Z",
        "_postman_exported_using": "Postman/4.8.0"
    },
    environment: {
        "id": "4454509f-00c3-fd32-d56c-ac1537f31415",
        "name": "test-env",
        "values": [
            {
                "key": "foo",
                "value": "bar",
                "type": "text",
                "enabled": true
            }
        ],
        "timestamp": 1404119927461,
        "_postman_variable_scope": "environment",
        "_postman_exported_at": "2016-10-17T14:26:34.940Z",
        "_postman_exported_using": "Postman/4.8.0"
    }
}).on('start', function (err, args) { // on start of run, log to console
    console.log('running a collection...');
}).on('done', function (err, summary) {
    if (err || summary.error) {
        console.error('collection run encountered an error.');
    }
    else {
        console.log('collection run completed.');
    }
});

All events receive two arguments (1) error and (2) args. The list below describes the properties of the second argument object.

Event	Description
start	The start of a collection run
beforeIteration	Before an iteration commences
beforeItem	Before an item execution begins (the set of prerequest->request->test)
beforePrerequest	Before prerequest script is execution starts
prerequest	After prerequest script execution completes
beforeRequest	Before an HTTP request is sent
request	After response of the request is received
beforeTest	Before test script is execution starts
test	After test script execution completes
beforeScript	Before any script (of type test or prerequest) is executed
script	After any script (of type test or prerequest) is executed
item	When an item (the whole set of prerequest->request->test) completes
iteration	After an iteration completes
assertion	This event is triggered for every test assertion done within test scripts
console	Every time a console function is called from within any script, this event is propagated
exception	When any asynchronous error happen in scripts this event is triggered
beforeDone	An event that is triggered prior to the completion of the run
done	This event is emitted when a collection run has completed, with or without errors

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Reporters

Configuring Reporters

• -r <reporter-name>, --reporters <reporter-name>
  Specify one reporter name as string or provide more than one reporter name as a comma separated list of reporter names. Available reporters are: cli, json, junit, progress and emojitrain.
  
  Spaces should not be used between reporter names / commas whilst specifying a comma separated list of reporters. For instance:
  
  ✅ -r cli,json,junit
  ❌ -r cli , json,junit

• --reporter-{{reporter-name}}-{{reporter-option}}
  When multiple reporters are provided, if one needs to specifically override or provide an option to one reporter, this is achieved by prefixing the option with --reporter-{{reporter-name}}-.
  
  For example, ... --reporters cli,json --reporter-cli-silent would silence the CLI reporter only.

• --reporter-{{reporter-options}}
  If more than one reporter accepts the same option name, they can be provided using the common reporter option syntax.
  
  For example, ... --reporters cli,json --reporter-silent passes the silent: true option to both JSON and CLI reporter.

Note: Sample collection reports have been provided in examples/reports.

CLI Reporter

The built-in CLI reporter supports the following options, use them with appropriate argument switch prefix. For example, the option no-summary can be passed as --reporter-no-summary or --reporter-cli-no-summary.

CLI reporter is enabled by default when Newman is used as a CLI, you do not need to specifically provide the same as part of --reporters option. However, enabling one or more of the other reporters will result in no CLI output. Explicitly enable the CLI option in such a scenario.

CLI Option	Description
--reporter-cli-silent	The CLI reporter is internally disabled and you see no output to terminal.
--reporter-cli-no-summary	The statistical summary table is not shown.
--reporter-cli-no-failures	This prevents the run failures from being separately printed.
--reporter-cli-no-assertions	This turns off the output for request-wise assertions as they happen.
--reporter-cli-no-success-assertions	This turns off the output for successful assertions as they happen.
--reporter-cli-no-console	This turns off the output of console.log (and other console calls) from collection's scripts.
--reporter-cli-no-banner	This turns off the newman banner shown at the beginning of each collection run.

JSON Reporter

The built-in JSON reporter is useful in producing a comprehensive output of the run summary. It takes the path to the file where to write the report. The content of this file is exactly the same as the summary parameter sent to the callback when Newman is used as a library.

To enable JSON reporter, provide --reporters json as a CLI option.

CLI Option	Description
--reporter-json-export <path>	Specify a path where the output JSON file will be written to disk. If not specified, the file will be written to newman/ in the current working directory. If the specified path does not exist, it will be created. However, if the specified path is a pre-existing directory, the report will be generated in that directory.

JUNIT/XML Reporter

The built-in JUnit reporter can output a summary of the collection run to a JUnit compatible XML file. To enable the JUNIT reporter, provide --reporters junit as a CLI option.

CLI Option	Description
--reporter-junit-export <path>	Specify a path where the output XML file will be written to disk. If not specified, the file will be written to newman/ in the current working directory. If the specified path does not exist, it will be created. However, if the specified path is a pre-existing directory, the report will be generated in that directory.

HTML Reporter

An external reporter, maintained by Postman, which can be installed via npm install -g newman-reporter-html. This reporter was part of the Newman project but was separated out into it's own project in V4.

The complete installation and usage guide is available at newman-reporter-html. Once the HTML reporter is installed you can provide --reporters html as a CLI option.

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External Reporters

Using External Reporters

Newman also supports external reporters, provided that the reporter works with Newman's event sequence. Working examples of how Newman reporters work can be found in lib/reporters.

For instance, to use the Newman HTML Reporter:

• Install the reporter package. Note that the name of the package is of the form newman-reporter-<name>. The installation should be global if Newman is installed globally, local otherwise. (Remove -g flag from the command below for a local installation.)

$ npm install -g newman-reporter-html

• Use the installed reporter, either via the CLI, or programmatic usage. Here, the newman-reporter prefix is not required while specifying the reporter name in the options.
  

$ newman run /path/to/collection.json -r cli,html

const newman = require('newman');

newman.run({
    collection: '/path/to/collection.json',
    reporters: ['cli', 'html']
}, process.exit);

Community Maintained Reporters

Several members of the Postman community have created custom reporters offering different option to output the data coming from Newman. Listed below is a selection of these but more can be found here on NPM.

Once the custom reporter NPM package has been installed either globally or locally, this can be then used with Newman in the following ways:

$ newman run /path/to/collection.json -r htmlextra,csv

const newman = require('newman');

newman.run({
    collection: '/path/to/collection.json',
    reporters: ['htmlextra', 'csv']
}, process.exit);

• htmlextra - This is an updated version of the standard HTML reporter containing a more in-depth data output and a few helpful extras
• csv - This reporter creates a csv file containing the high level summary of the Collection run
• json-summary - A Newman JSON Reporter that strips the results down to a minimum
• teamcity - A reporter built to be used with the Team City CI server
• testrail - A reporter built for Test Rail, the test case management tool
• statsd - This reporter can be used to send the Collection run data to statsd and used on time series analytic tools like Grafana
• confluence - Confluence reporter for Newman that uploads a Newman report on a Confluence page
• influxdb - This reporter sends the test results information to InfluxDB which can be used from Grafana to build dashboards

Creating Your Own Reporter

A custom reporter is a Node module with a name of the form newman-reporter-<name>. To create a custom reporter:

1. Navigate to a directory of your choice, and create a blank npm package with npm init.
2. Add an index.js file, that exports a function of the following form:

function CustomNewmanReporter (emitter, reporterOptions, collectionRunOptions) {
  // emitter is an event emitter that triggers the following events: https://github.com/postmanlabs/newman#newmanrunevents
  // reporterOptions is an object of the reporter specific options. See usage examples below for more details.
  // collectionRunOptions is an object of all the collection run options: https://github.com/postmanlabs/newman#newmanrunoptions-object--callback-function--run-eventemitter
}
module.exports = CustomNewmanReporter

3. To use your reporter locally, use the npm pack command to create a .tgz file. Once created, this can be installed using the npm i -g newman-reporter-<name>.<version>.tgz command.

Once you're happy with your reporter, it can be published to npm using npm publish. This will then be made available for other people to download.

Scoped reporter package names like @myorg/newman-reporter-<name> are also supported. Working reporter examples can be found in lib/reporters.

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File uploads

Newman also supports file uploads for request form data. The files must be present in the current working directory. Your collection must also contain the filename in the "src" attribute of the request.

In this collection, sample-file.txt should be present in the current working directory.

{
    "info": {
        "name": "file-upload"
    },
    "item": [
        {
            "request": {
                "url": "https://postman-echo.com/post",
                "method": "POST",
                "body": {
                    "mode": "formdata",
                    "formdata": [
                        {
                            "key": "file",
                            "type": "file",
                            "enabled": true,
                            "src": "sample-file.txt"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

$ ls
file-upload.postman_collection.json  sample-file.txt

$ newman run file-upload.postman_collection.json

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Using Newman with the Postman API

1 Generate an API key
2 Fetch a list of your collections from: https://api.getpostman.com/collections?apikey=$apiKey
3 Get the collection link via it's uid: https://api.getpostman.com/collections/$uid?apikey=$apiKey
4 Obtain the environment URI from: https://api.getpostman.com/environments?apikey=$apiKey
5 Using the collection and environment URIs acquired in steps 3 and 4, run the collection as follows:

$ newman run "https://api.getpostman.com/collections/$uid?apikey=$apiKey" \
    --environment "https://api.getpostman.com/environments/$uid?apikey=$apiKey"

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Using Newman in Docker

To use Newman in Docker check our docker documentation.

Migration Guide

• Newman v4 to v5 Migration Guide
• Newman v4.x Documentation

Compatibility

NodeJS

Newman	Node
v3.x	>= v4.x
v4.x	>= v6.x
v5.x	>= v10.x

The current Node version compatibility can also be seen from the engines.node property in package.json

File Encoding

Newman attempts to detect file encoding for files that are provided as command line input. However, it mostly relies on NodeJS and the underlying operating system to do the heavy lifting. Currently, ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE and ISO-8859-1 are the only ones that are detection assisted.

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Contributing

Please take a moment to read our contributing guide to learn about our development process. Open an issue first to discuss potential changes/additions.

Community Support

If you are interested in talking to the Postman team and fellow Newman users, you can find us on our Postman Community Forum. Feel free to drop by and say hello. You'll find us posting about upcoming features and beta releases, answering technical support questions, and contemplating world peace.

Sign in using your Postman account to participate in the discussions and don't forget to take advantage of the search bar - the answer to your question might already be waiting for you! Don’t want to log in? Then lurk on the sidelines and absorb all the knowledge.

License

This software is licensed under Apache-2.0. Copyright Postdot Technologies, Inc. See the LICENSE.md file for more information.