Microsoft 365 Community Microsoft Graph, 5 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: Microsoft Graph Postman - Scripts and advanced functionality

Description

Fact: Microsoft Graph has a collection on Postman. In this 13-minute developer focused review – Rabeb Othmani’s deep-dive focus is Scripting in Postman. What is it (adding dynamic behavior to requests and collections), writing API tests, building requests that contain dynamic parameters, and passing data between requests. Demo shows how to find a specific Teams channel from a list of Microsoft Teams using scripts (pieces of JavaScript code) and about chaining execution requests. This PnP Community demo is taken from the weekly Microsoft 365 Platform Community call recorded on September 13, 2022.

Demo Presenter
• Rabeb Othmani (Microsoft) | @Rabeb_Othmani

Supporting materials
• Documentation - Use Postman with the Microsoft Graph API | aka.ms/graph/postman
• Previous sessions
o June 28 - Demo - Taking advantage of the Microsoft Graph Postman collections - Rabeb Othmani (Microsoft) | @Rabeb_Othmani | https://youtu.be/DlGcsPu9XfA
o June 14 - Demo - Introduction to Microsoft Graph Postman collection - Sébastien Levert (Microsoft) | @sebastienlevert | https://youtu.be/y9FsUBzCRF8?t=2232

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/m365/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/m365/community

A

A

I am a product manager with the Microsoft graph team, and today we will be talking about Postman and the Microsoft graph collection on PostNet. Just in case you are not familiar with what Postman is so Postman is an API platform, a very powerful API platform that enables you to build and test apis, and it's really an amazing tool and uh very loved by a lot of developers because of a very rich set of features.

A

One of those really amazing features on Postman is Collections and, as the name indicates collections are groups of API requests that are organized together into folders, uh one to make your work. um Space looks more organized, but also they are a great way to collaborate with your team members, as you can Fork those Collections and collaborate on them together, and it's also a great way if you need to generate some apis documentation and tests.

A

So the good news for us is: we do actually have a Microsoft graph collection on Postman, so if you're using Microsoft graph and if you love Postman, we brought Microsoft graph to you on Postman in the I forget to mention. So this is actually the third or fourth session of a series we did on uh postman on Microsoft graph.

A

So before the summer break in the previous sessions we went through, you know, what's Postman how you can set up an uh Azure active directory application and then authenticate to be able to use the Microsoft graph collection. We even um went through how you can create your own kind of uh personalized customized Postman collection using Graphics Explorer, and then you can import it on Postman. How you can use the collection, Runner, Etc I will make sure to leave all the relevant links for you here, especially the one with the step-by-step guide.

A

Oh I, see Fabian already did that. Thank you very much Fabian. So that's like the guide on how to use Postman when with a Microsoft graph, and today we will continue now we don't want to run this today. We're gonna continue uh with um some more advanced features of Postman, uh particularly scripting, so scripting basically is adding some Dynamic Behavior to requests and collections. If you do need to add that, so that allows you to write, you know tests or maybe build some requests that have dynamic params or even passing data between requests.

A

Now this is particularly useful in the case of using Microsoft graph, because um the chances of you needing you know a piece of information. Some data from a request to another is really high, like you need user ID to do a lot of things with the API now, if I can share, my browser, I can show you Postman I am on Postman. This is my workspace and I have the right environment here so and I did authenticate. So this all should work as it should right.

A

So, as I mentioned, sometimes you need a piece of of information from one request to another, for example, uh let's say I am doing some sort of you know operations. My applications requires me to do few things with teams.

A

If I look here, I see, I can get all the teams that I'm part of um one thing I might be interested in is for one specific team is to maybe see the channels or even create a channel.

A

Etc and for that I will need to have the exact team ID that I'm interested in to do anything else now to do this. um The the flow, the concept with Postman is fairly easy and straightforward, passing data or dynamic params. Basically, we store that as an environment variable just to start as an environment variable and then use it as needed. So if you see here, for example, for me to get the channels, I will need the team ID go to my environment on this environment.

A

I have one variable that is called team ID and then I can set the value to whichever value I need. um Let's say, for example, I can see here that I do have five teams and if I go I'm gonna just change the value for the sake of doing this.

A

So if I copy this value and then set it on, my variable here make sure I'm saving and then, if I go and see the channels, it should show me the new value. As you can see here, it's a new value and then send I can see which channels I have in there.

A

It's simple, it's easy, but let's face it. Copy pasting manually like this is not particularly useful, especially if you are dealing with a more complex scenario. There must be a better way to do this and that's where scripting came in handy, so these scripts are basically uh just pieces of JavaScript code and, if, like me, you're not a JavaScript developer, please don't be intimidated by this, because it's fairly easy and for the most common scenarios you need two lines of code. So don't worry.

A

We can survive this JavaScript situation here all together and here's where all the magic happen. It's really not magic. Basically postman has a Sandbox where all these Crypts would drop. Now this is tests, and this is where we're gonna put those scripts now, luckily, for us, I did not write any of this.

A

This came by default with when I forged my Microsoft graph collection and, as you can see here, this is like basically to guide me as a user to make sure that I am properly authenticated, and this one is really useful for me, because this is in case I. Don't have the right permissions, it will say: no, you can't you know, you can't run this because you're missing some Scopes go to your other active directory.

A

You know dashboard and add the permissions that you need now to pass data to basically to make sure that that variable that we have on the environment is set to the exact value that we needed to all we have to do. Is this so we're gonna pass the response body now. That requires also that we take a good look at this response body to know the exact value.

A

What we are interested in and then all I'm saying here is from this response body I want you to set the environment variable with the name team ID to the ID of the first value you get, and that's because here it says it's called value. It could be something else and I will need to use um the right value. uh Obviously you get here, it's really it's brilliant! You get auto complete and the user. You know writing code stuff. Basically, so that's what I'm getting um now because I have this.

A

If I run this, it should change this environment value to the first one again.

A

So I did run this I go in here and then I see it did change again. So now, if I'm running this, it will show me. uh Yes, it should show me something different because it's a different team. So if I try here, it says, I have five channels, I wonder if it's different, yes and for this team I have simply uh one channel.

A

um Obviously this is an example. You could have as many variables as you want name them. You know as appropriate as you need and use them here to pass basically to pass data and to have dynamic param in here.

A

So um that's one thing: um I wanted to show the other thing that I wanted to show and again this might be very useful in the case of the Microsoft graph collection. Last time, if you were with us when we saw the collection Runner, which I can't show again.

A

So if you go here if I say, run collection, as you see this, like Microsoft graph collection, is a fairly big collection. So this collection here is is Big to run and it may not even make sense for you to run everything. Yes, you can manually deselect and then select the items that you're interested in, but again this might not be the the best way to do it. A great way to do. It, though, is chaining and chaining requests is making sure that you are setting.

A

What's the next request, to run after a specific request and to do that, what I need to do is Postman and set next request, and then you simply set your next request and whichever name you have here so I could say: get I'm gonna create channel because that's easy.

A

um Now few things to note about this: this is irrelevant if you're using the sand here. So if you are just running this request individually, nothing would happen with this Postman set next request. This is only useful in the case of a collection, so this is a way to set the order in which you want to run multiple requests inside um a collection and basically I think that's all I wanted to show today I'm not sure, if hopefully I'm not over time, because last time I was over time.

B

Nope you're right on time, rabbit so 15 minute slots. uh So this is all good. So thank you. Thank you for showing that and and showing those new things really really cool and we'll we'll add on the blog post. Summary, of course, the the references the the assets. So people can easily access that from the recording.

A

Yeah and if you have any questions, uh please uh let me know on the chart and we can take that yeah.

B

Excellent. Thank you Robert on that one really really cool.