Testing with postman

The following guide goes over the process of testing backend APIs with Postman. These APIs are automatically exposed via the backend SDK (/auth/* path).

Important

Make sure that the ThirdParty Recipe is correctly setup in your backend
For the examples given below, the backend runs on domain localhost and port 3001.
You can find the Open API spec for the APIs under test in the SwaggerHub API documentation.
Postman does cookie management on its own. You don't need to manually set cookies on each request.

The /auth/signinup API requires the redirectURI, thirdPartyId, and code attributes to appear as a JSON object in the request body.

redirectURI: It is the link that redirects the user after authentication. For example, for sign in with Google, the value of this is {websiteDomain}/auth/callback/google.
thirdPartyId: The id used to identify the provider. For example, if Google is a ThirdParty provider, its thirdPartyId is google.
code: The auth code that the third party provider sends when they call the redirectURI (post auth from their UI).
On a successful response, a new user session creates session tokens set in the response, and the response body contains the user object, the createdNewUser, and status values as JSON data.
The following session tokens appear:
- sAccessToken
- sRefreshToken
More information about these cookies is available in the session management security documentation.

2. Session verification

You can also test APIs that require the user to log in.
For example, there is an API used to query user data with the verifySession middleware as shown below.

import express from "express";
import { verifySession } from "supertokens-node/recipe/session/framework/express";

let app = express();

// The following code snippet is an example API. You do not need to 
// implement it in your app

app.post("/change-user-data", verifySession(), async (req, res) => {
    let userId = req.session.getUserId();
    // mutate some user data
    res.send({
        userId
    })
})

In Postman, set the request type to POST.
Set the URL to http://localhost:3001/change-user-data
If you have the antiCsrf attribute set to VIA_TOKEN in your backend SuperTokens configuration, then in the Postman Header tab, set a key as anti-csrf and value as the anti-csrf token retrieved from the login response.
On a successful response, the response body contains user data.

Important

By default, for GET APIs, you don't need to provide the anti-csrf request header as anti-CSRF checks are only done in non-GET APIs

In case you query the /change-user-data API with an expired access token, you receive a 401 response with the message try refresh token.

Failed query due to expired access token in postman

To generate new session tokens you can use the /auth/session/refresh API as shown in the next section.

3. Refreshing session tokens

In case your access token expires you can call the /auth/session/refresh API to generate a new access token and refresh token.

In Postman, set the request type to POST.
Set the URL to http://localhost:3001/auth/session/refresh
On a successful response, the system sets new session tokens.

You can see the new session tokens by switching to the cookies tab

Viewing session tokens in cookies tab in postman

4. Logout

The /auth/signout API invalidates the user sessions. This clears the session cookies set in Postman.

In Postman, set the request type to POST.
Set the URL to http://localhost:3001/auth/signout
On a successful response, Postman and the database clear the session tokens.

1. Sign up

2. Session verification

3. Refreshing session tokens

4. Logout