How to Upload Files with Postman

When working with Postman, you may encounter situations where you need to upload multiple files each with their own Content-Type. Unfortunately, this feature is not currently supported in Postman. Every time you send a request, you will have to select the file again.

Another limitation of Postman is that files are not stored in history or collections due to HTML 5 restrictions. However, there is a way to simulate filling a form on a website and submitting it using the form-data editor. This feature allows you to set key-value pairs using the data editor for your data.

Multipart/form-data is the default encoding used by web forms to transfer data. Postman does not automatically set any header type for binary body types. If you manually use a Content-Type header, that value takes precedence over what Postman sets.

The raw mode header is set when you select the formatting type. For form-data and urlencoded body types, Postman automatically attaches the correct Content-Type header so you don't have to set it. The Content-Type header allows the server to parse the body properly.

When sending requests through the HTTP protocol, your server might expect a Content-Type header. The body editor in Postman is divided into four areas and has different controls depending on the body type. Postman also lets you send almost any kind of HTTP request.

In terms of uploading files, it's not currently possible to refer to a specific file in the Postman collection runner since it's essentially an embedded Chrome browser that doesn't allow this functionality. This can disrupt the workflow between building requests in Postman and running them in Newman.

To work around this issue, you can use Newman, Postman's command-line companion. With Newman, you can create a collection in Postman and then run it using the command line. However, this requires saving your collection as a JSON file before sending it to CI for execution or running it locally.

It's worth noting that if you populate the src portion of a File field in a multipart request directly in the postman_collection.json file and then import it into Postman, make changes to other requests or add new ones, and then export the collection to a file again, the src value is lost and set to null. This can be frustrating, especially during development of test collections.

Overall, while there are some limitations when it comes to uploading files with Postman, there are workarounds available that can help you achieve your goals.

Upload file with postman