Postman Plugin For Backstage

This plugin is designed to integrate Postman functionality into your Backstage application seamlessly. It simplifies the addition of a Postman card to your API views and enables dynamic retrieval of Postman resources like collections and APIs. Linking your APIs with Postman collections or APIs empowers consumers to interact effortlessly with these resources within the Postman interface. This includes features such as a Run in Postman button and the ability to dynamically fetch collections or APIs from Postman and add them to your API list using an Entity Provider.

Table of Contents

• Disclaimer and Plugin Compatibility
• Plugin Features
  • API View
  • Collections View
  • Monitor View
  • Catalog APIs using Postman Tags
  • Coming soon
• Installation
• Configure Postman Frontend Plugin for Backstage
• Configure Postman Backend Plugin for Backstage
  • Prerequisites
  • Configuration Guide
    • Basic Configuration
    • Advanced Configuration
  • Configuring the Postman Entity Provider (optional)
• Postman Metadata Guide
  • Metadata Object Overview
  • Common Parameters
  • APIs
  • Collections (Use collection tag or IDs)
  • Monitors (Use monitor ID or name)

Disclaimer and Plugin Compatibility

These backstage plugins are not officially supported by Postman and are intended for Backstage users to integrate Postman into their API documentation easily. They have been successfully tested with Backstage v1.22 and 1.23. Please file an issue if you are using a newer version of Backstage so that we can recommend how to integrate best under those circumstances.

Plugin Features

This plugin offers several views which you can use to display published API information stored in Postman, show collections with a Run In Postman button and allow you to view your Postman monitor results on the API page.

API View

Displays your published Postman API data in Backstage, allowing you to access both the API information and the published API collections.

Refer to the Postman API Metadata for the parameters needed to display this view.

Collections View

This view displays the collection(s) of a given API stored in Postman. It includes a Run in Postman button, which is activated based on the collection ID(s) or tag defined in the entities.yaml file.

Refer to the Postman Collections Metadata to see the parameters needed to display this view.

Monitor View

This view shows the health of your API as determined by a Postman monitor. The monitor can be displayed using its name or id.

For more details, refer to this section.

Catalog APIs using Postman Tags

You can also use this plugin to dynamically fetch Postman APIs or collections using Postman tags. For more details, please refer to this section.

Coming soon

A Governance Checks view will be added in future versions of this plugin.

Installation

# From your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/app add @postman-solutions/postman-backstage-plugin
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @postman-solutions/postman-backstage-backend-plugin

The next step is configuring both plugins as described in the next two sections.

Configure Postman Frontend Plugin for Backstage

The Postman frontend plugin enables you to link your APIs to their corresponding collections, published APIs and monitors within Postman. You can also discover APIs and collections within your Postman Team that have been tagged with a tag of your choice and add them to the catalogue.

It is a community-driven initiative to extend Backstage functionalities with Postman.

Dependencies

Important

Please note that the frontend plugin will not function without the backend plugin.

Refer to the installation steps for the backend plugin here.

Getting Started

1. Configure your Postman API key in your local app-config.yaml or production app-config.production.yaml file:

Caution

The apiKey in the configuration should not belong to an admin or super admin user, as this would grant access to all collections and APIs in the team. Instead, use an apiKey from a user with access only to the information that can be safely displayed to the authenticated developer audience in Backstage. This principle of least privilege helps to maintain tight control over your Postman data and reduces the potential impact if a user adds a reference to an entity in a private workspace or accidentally tags a private API with the tag used by the Postman entity provider.

postman:
    baseUrl: https://api.postman.com
    apiKey: ${YOUR_API_KEY_HERE}

To get a Postman API Key, follow the instructions here.

2. Import and add the component in your packages/app/src/components/Catalog/EntityPage.tsx page to display the Postman card on your API page.

// ... other imports here
import { PostmanCard } from '@postman-solutions/postman-backstage-plugin';
// ... other components
const apiPage = (
  <EntityLayout>
    <EntityLayout.Route path="/" title="Overview">
    // ... other elements
    <Grid item md={6} xs={12}>
      <PostmanCard />
    </Grid>
    // ... other elements
    </EntityLayout.Route>
  </EntityLayout>
// ...
);
// ...

Configure Postman Backend Plugin for Backstage

This postman-backend plugin provides some Postman services that the Postman frontend plugin will use to render the different component views.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• Make sure the Postman Frontend Plugin is already installed and configured
• A running instance of Backstage
• Node.js and npm installed (Node.js 18.x or later is recommended)
• Access to Postman API credentials

Configuration Guide

This guide provides instructions for configuring your application to interact with the Postman API using the app-config.yaml file. Follow the steps below to set up your environment correctly.

Basic Configuration

API Key Setup: First, make sure to include the base URL and set an environment variable POSTMAN_API_KEY with your Postman API key in the configuration file if not done already.

Caution

The apiKey in the configuration should not belong to an admin or super admin user, as this would grant access to all collections and APIs in the team. Instead, use an apiKey from a user with access only to the information that can be safely displayed to the authenticated developer audience in Backstage. This principle of least privilege helps to maintain tight control over your Postman data and reduces the potential impact if a user adds a reference to an entity in a private workspace or accidentally tags a private API with the tag used by the Postman entity provider.

    postman:
        baseUrl: https://api.postman.com
        apiKey: ${POSTMAN_API_KEY}

Advanced Configuration

1. Entity Provider Setup: The plugin includes an entity provider to fetch API assets from Postman periodically using a Postman tag. Tags can be added to collections or Postman APIs. To use this option, please add the following settings to your app-config.yaml:

   Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
   postman/team	string	Yes	Name of your Postman team. For a team URL like https://myteam.postman.co, your team name would be myteam.postman.co.
   postman/owner	string	Yes	Owner of the API assets. The default is "postman". Consider creating a User or Group for this owner.
   postman/synchEntitiesWithTag	string	Yes	Postman tag used to fetch API assets.
   postman/entityProviderSynchInterval	string	Yes	Interval (in hours) for fetching the API assets from Postman.
   postman/system	string	Yes	System of the API assets. The default is "main".

   Example configuration:

  postman:
      baseUrl: https://api.postman.com
      apiKey: ${POSTMAN_API_KEY}
      team: my-team.postman.co
      synchEntitiesWithTag: backstage
      owner: postman-team
      entityProviderSynchInterval: 2
      system: my-system

2. Caching Options: The Postman backend plugin supports caching. Configure cache settings by adding the following properties:

   Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
   postman/cache/ttl	number	Yes	Cache expiry time in milliseconds. The default is 600000 (10 minutes).

   Example configuration for a custom cache duration:

   postman:
       baseUrl: https://api.postman.com
       apiKey: ${POSTMAN_API_KEY}
       team: my-team.postman.co
       cache:
         ttl: 300000  # 5 minutes

If you prefer not to utilise caching and always get the latest information from Postman, you can set the TTL value to 0 or any value smaller than the interval at which the entity service refreshes.

Add the backend plugin to your Backstage application

1. Create a new file named packages/backend/src/plugins/postmanbackend.ts, and add the following to it:

import { PluginEnvironment } from '../types';
import { createRouter } from '@postman-solutions/postman-backstage-backend-plugin';

export default async function createPlugin({
  logger,
  config,
}: PluginEnvironment) {
  return await createRouter({ logger, config });
}

2. Next, let's wire this into the overall backend router, edit packages/backend/src/index.ts:

import postmanbackend from './plugins/postmanbackend';
// ...
async function main() {
  // ...
  // Add this line under the other lines that follow the useHotMemoize pattern
  const postmanBackEndEnv = useHotMemoize(module, () => createEnv('postman-backend'));
  // ...
  // Insert this line under the other lines that add their routers to apiRouter in the same way
  apiRouter.use('/postman', await postmanbackend(postmanBackEndEnv));
// ...
}

3. (optional) you can run yarn start-backend from the root directory to start the backend server

Configuring the Postman Entity Provider (optional)

The Postman EntityProvider is an optional component that allows you to dynamically retrieve Postman APIs and collections that have been tagged with a certain Postman tag, e.g. backstage. In order for it to work, you would need to add some more properties to your local app-config.yaml or production app-config.production.yaml file:

postman:
    baseUrl: https://api.postman.com
    apiKey: ${POSTMAN_API_KEY}
    synchEntitiesWithTag: TAG_NAME
    entityProviderSynchInterval: SYNC_FREQUENCY_IN_MINUTES (optional)    

Additionally, you would need to insert the following lines into your packages/backend/src/plugins/catalog.ts file:

...
// new code after other imports
import { PostmanEntityProvider } from '@postman-solutions/postman-backstage-backend-plugin';
import { CacheManager } from '@backstage/backend-common';
...

...
    const builder = CatalogBuilder.create(env);
    
    // new code after builder got instantiated
    const cacheManager = CacheManager.fromConfig(env.config);
    const cache = cacheManager.forPlugin('postman').getClient({defaultTtl: env.config?.getNumber('postman.cache.ttl') ?? 60000 })
    const postmanEntityProvider = PostmanEntityProvider.fromConfig(env.config, {logger: env.logger, cache})
    const postmanEntityProviderSynchInterval = env.config?.getNumber('postman.entityProviderSynchInterval') ?? 5;
    builder.addEntityProvider(postmanEntityProvider);

...

...
    await processingEngine.start();

    // new code after processing engine started
    await env.scheduler.scheduleTask({
      id: 'run_postman_entity_provider_refresh',
      fn: async () => {
        await postmanEntityProvider.run();
      },
      frequency: { minutes: postmanEntityProviderSynchInterval },
      timeout: { minutes: 10 },
    });
...

Postman Metadata Guide

Metadata Object Overview

This section provides an overview of the metadata object for this Postman plugin in the context of the Backstage implementation. All parameters should only be defined with the kind: API in your YAML file.

All three options, API, Collections, and Monitor, can be used in conjunction.

Common Parameters

These parameters are common across different kinds of entities:

Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
postman/domain	string	Yes	The sub-domain of your Postman instance. E.g. if your Postman URL is postman-demo.postman.co, use postman-demo. If not defined, the application will use go.postman.co to redirect users to Postman.
postman/workspace/id	string	No	The ID of your Postman workspace. This ID will be used to construct the links to redirect to Postman.

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/domain: "postman-demo"
  postman/workspace/id: "YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID_HERE"

APIs

Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
postman/api/id	string	No	The ID of your Postman API.
postman/api/name	string	Yes	(optional) The name of your Postman API. If referenced, this value will be used to fetch the API Postman monitor(s) using the API name.

Using the API ID

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/domain: "postman-demo"
  postman/workspace/id: "YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID_HERE"
  postman/api/id: "YOUR_POSTMAN_API_ID_HERE"

API with API name

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/domain: "postman-demo"
  postman/workspace/id: "YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID_HERE"
  postman/api/id: "YOUR_POSTMAN_API_ID_HERE"
  postman/api/name: "YOUR_POSTMAN_API_NAME"

Collections (Use collection tag or IDs)

Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
postman/collection/id	string	Yes	The ID of your Postman collection.
postman/collections/ids	array	Yes	An array of IDs of your Postman collections.
postman/collections/tag	string	Yes	A string specifying the collection tag to retrieve.
postman/collections/pagination	string	Yes	A 'true' or 'false" value to indicate whether you want to paginate through the results.

Get collection by ID

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/collection/id: "YOUR_COLLECTION_ID"

Using collection tag

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/collections/pagination: 'true'
  postman/collections/tag: "YOUR_COLLECTION_TAG_HERE"

Using collection IDs

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/collections/ids: ["YOUR_FIRST_COLLECTION_ID", "YOUR_SECOND_COLLECTION_ID"]

Monitors (Use monitor ID or name)

Parameter	Schema Type	Optional	Description
postman/monitor/id	string	No	The ID of your Postman monitor.
postman/monitor/name	string	No	The name of your Postman monitor.

Using monitor id

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/monitor/id: "YOUR_MONITOR_ID_HERE"

Using monitor name

apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: API
metadata:
  name: calculation-grpc-api
  postman/monitor/name: "YOUR_MONITOR_NAME_HERE"

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute the code according to the terms of the license.

Contributing

Thank you for considering contributing to this project. For more information on how to get started, please check out the contribution guidelines.

Code of Conduct

We expect all contributors to adhere to the Code of Conduct. Please review the guidelines before contributing to ensure a positive and inclusive community for everyone.

Contact

If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions regarding this project, feel free to contact @aphanor-postman or @jonico.