From clicks to coffee breaks - automate with Postman collections

As a part of a larger project, I recently had to delete about 2000 records from a system. The issue was that the front-end interface of this system didn’t have the functionality to allow for bulk deleting. I could have manually deleted these records, but that would have taken forever.

So, what to do?

What I did have was access to the API and the ids for all the records to be deleted. After some research, I learned that Postman allows for batch processing by running a collection.

To do so, fire up Postman and create a new collection, renaming it as you’d like.

Then, add a request and set up your call as needed to align with your job and with the appropriate parameters and authorizations. In my case, I’m going to call mine “Delete record” with an {{id}} variable.

Next, I am going to set up my CSV file that contains the list of record ids to be deleted from the system. See sample file below.

Now we are ready to run our collection. Navigate to the collection folder and select the 3 dots > then select “Run collection”. What this will do is call the API for each of the records listed in our CSV file.

You should be presented with a screen similar to the screenshot below. Select the actions you’d like and load in your file under “Data” and classify your file type accordingly. Then run your job! One thing to note — I found the “Delay” functionality quite helpful as I was running into API rate-limiting issues.

You will receive confirmation once the job has been completed and be presented with a screen similar to the one below, along with issues or failed runs.

If you find yourself needing to perform bulk operations or automate repetitive tasks, give Postman collections a try. You can go make yourself a coffee☕ with your newfound time as you wait for the job to complete. I saved myself at least 2+ hours on this task, which I used for … completing additional work in my backlog. So fun 😂.