Automation with Postman

Postman support is available starting with Squash TM 3.0.

Configuration of the execution environment

newman and its HTML Reporter (newman-reporter-html) must be present in the execution environment.

They can be installed with the commands:

npm install -g newman
npm install -g newman-reporter-html

(If you don’t have npm installed, download and install Node.js.)

Test reference in Squash TM

In order to bind a Squash TM test case to a Postman automated test, the content of the Automated test reference field of the Automation block of a test case must have the following format:

[repository]/[collection]#[folder]#[request]
or
[repository]/[collection]#[folder]
or
[repository]/[collection]
(The reference contains zero, one, or two # characters.)

with:

[repository]: Name of the Git repository.
[collection]: Path and name of the Postman collection file, from the root of the project (with the .postman_collection.json extension).

No support of renamed collection files

Squash Orchestrator uses the name of the file to determine the name of the collection, i.e. if the file is called <name>.postman_collection.json, then the collection name is considered to be <name>. Squash Orchestrator uses this name <name> to analyze the execution report and determine the test result.
If the collection file has been renamed, this mechanism will no longer work.
[folder]: Name of a specific folder containing requests in the Postman collection file (Newman's --folder option).
This parameter is optional, i.e. the last two components of the test reference may be absent.
It is also possible to use an empty string and to indicate a specific request (in [request]).
[request]: Name of a specific request to parse for which you want to obtain a particular result.
This parameter is optional, i.e. it may be absent.

Automated test reference and execution

The request [request] precision in the test reference has no impact on the execution, but only on test result determination.
So, even when defining the specific level of the request, all requests defined in the folder (if [folder] is defined) or in the collection (if [folder] is empty) will be executed; this means, for example, that if several Squash TM test cases point toward the same folder / collection but toward different requests, then all requests of the folder / collection will be executed several times.
The test reports include the traces of all executed requests. But, only the Error / Failed / Success status corresponding to the specific request is used to determinate the test case result.

Determination of the result of the test case

If a request [request] is not specified, the result of the Squash TM test case is calculated by taking into account the individual results of each Postman request included in the folder [folder] if it is specified, in the whole collection [collection] otherwise:

If at least one test has an Error status (in case of a technical issue), the status of the execution will be Blocked.
If at least one test fails functionally and none of the other ones has an Error status, the status of the execution will be Failed.
If all tests succeed, the status of the execution will be Success.

Unicity of the specified folder

If the root directory of the project contains multiple directories with the name [folder], Newman will only run the first one it finds. It is therefore strongly advised to choose unique names for the lowest level directories.

Nature of the exploitable Squash TM parameters

The exploitable Squash TM parameters will differ depending on whether you're using the Community/Premium or Ultimate version of Squash.

Here is a table showing the exploitable parameters (these parameters are transmitted as test parameters, see below, Squash TM does not generate global parameters):

Nature	Key	Community/Premium	Ultimate
Name of the dataset	DSNAME	✅	✅
Dataset parameter	DS_[name]	✅	✅
Execution ID	TC_EXECUTION_ID	❌	✅
Test case reference	TC_REFERENCE	✅	✅
Test case internal UUID	TC_UUID	✅	✅
Test case custom field	TC_CUF_[code]	✅	✅
Iteration custom field	IT_CUF_[code]	❌	✅
Campaign custom field	CPG_CUF_[code]	❌	✅
Test suite custom field	TS_CUF_[code]	❌	✅

Legend:

[code]: Value of the "Code" of a custom field
[name]: Parameter name as filled in Squash TM

Availability of the execution ID

TC_EXECUTION_ID is only available with Squash TM 8.0 or later.

As indicated, Squash TM adds a prefix to the code of the transmitted custom field. Make sure to take it into account.

Refer to the Squash TM documentation for more information about custom fields.

Parameters usage

It is possible, when running Postman tests, to exploit parameters within it. A parameter can be a test parameter or a global parameter. Squash TM transmits only test parameters. Test parameters and global parameters can be used in the case of a launch from a CI/CD pipeline with the postman/params action.

The global parameters are transmitted as global variables.
The test parameters are transmitted as environment variables.
Refer to the Postman documentation for a description of these variable types and how to use them.
This means that

the value of a global parameter can be retrieved using pm.globals.get("param_name")
the value of a test parameter can be retrieved using pm.environment.get("param_name")
the value of a global parameter or of a test parameter can be retrieved with the {{param_name}} syntax; if a global parameter and a test parameter have both the param_name name, the value of the test parameter is used

Example

Below is an example of a Postman collection file and the corresponding Squash TM test case automation:

Postman example

Adding parameters to the test launch command line

You can pass additional parameters to the newman run command using the POSTMAN_EXTRA_OPTIONS environment variable. Here is an example of how to define an environment variable in Squash TM and associate it with the orchestrator.

Some parameters are already defined in the newman run command used to launch tests:

newman run \
  "{collection_path}"  \
  -g _opentf_global_params.json -e _opentf_environment_params.json \
  --reporters junit,html \
  --reporter-junit-export newman-run-report.xml \
  --reporter-html-export newman-run-report.html $POSTMAN_EXTRA_OPTIONS

You must avoid passing, via the POSTMAN_EXTRA_OPTIONS variable, the command line parameters that conflict with the parameters already used, or the parameters that impact the generation or alter the path of the reports expected by the orchestrator (view the report list).

Non-support of the space character on Linux

Squash Orchestrator currently does not support the space character () in the POSTMAN_EXTRA_OPTIONS environment variable for tests executed in a Linux execution environment.

Supported versions

Squash has been validated with Postman 8.12.1. Any recent version should work properly.