What is the difference between Params and Body in Postman - postman

This might be a really simple question but I can't seem to find a clear answer.
In postman, what is the difference between the Params and the Body tabs?. I noticed that when I was trying to perform a PUT request, if I am to add the key and value in Params my PUT request doesn't seem to update what I intend to update but if I perform the PUT request in Body and have the form-data selected than the expected update happens.
So what exactly are the differences?

Params correspond to the request parameters that are appended to the request URL.they are most used with GET requests. On the other hand, Body is the actual request body (usually it defines the request payload or the data that needs to be processed by the request). PUT and POST requests read usually the data from the body of the request and not from the params.

Related

Using request data in Postman mock response

In my postman mock server I would like to use data from the request. Is this possible? I can't seem to find any reference to this scenario.
For example, my request includes a documentId value. I would like to capture that value and use it in the response.
Thanks.
Postman supports capture of URL path parameters for use in the response body, so e.g. if your example has https://my.example.com/v1/users/{{user_id}} in the URL, then you can use {{user_id}} in the response.
That's about as far as it goes though. You can't at present use data from query parameters, headers or the request body in your responses.
If you need to use other types of request data in your mock responses, you might want to check out MockLab. I've written up a detailed comparison of Postman mock servers and MockLab including a specific on dynamic responses and request data.

Cloudfront Lambda#edge set cookie on Viewer Request

Update: Collected my thoughts better
I'm generating a unique identifier (UUID) for each user in the Viewer Request Lambda, and then selecting a cached page to return based upon that UUID. This works.
Ideally, this user would always have the same UUID.
I must generate that UUID in the Viewer Request if it is not present in a cookie on that Viewer Request. I also need that UUID to be set as a cookie, which of course happens in the response not the request.
Without caching, my server simply handles taking a custom header and creating a Set-Cookie in the response header.
I am not finding a way to handle this if I want to cache the page. I can ignore the request header for caching and serve the correct cached page, but then the user does not persist that UUID as no cookie is set to be utilized in their next request.
Has anyone accomplished something like this?
Things I'm trying
There are a few angles I'm working on with this, but haven't been able to get to work yet:
Some sort of setting in Cloudfront I'm unaware of that handles the header or other data pass-through from Viewer Request to Viewer Response, which could be used in a second lambda in Cloudfront.
Modify the response object headers preemptively in the Viewer Request. I don't think this is possible, as they return headers are not yet created, unless there's some built-in Cloudfront methodology I'm missing.
An existing pass-through header of some sort, I don't know if that's even a thing since I'm not intimately familiar with this aspect of request-response handling, but worth a shot.
Possibly (haven't tried yet though) I could create the entire response object in the Client Request lambda and somehow serve the cached page from there, modifying the response headers then passing it into the callback method.
Tobin's answer actually works, but is not a solid solution. If the user is not storing or serving their cookies it becomes an infinite loop, plus I'd rather not throw a redirect up in front of all of my pages if I can avoid it
Somewhat-working concept
Viewer Request Lambda, when UUID not present in cookies, generates UUID
Viewer Request Lambda sets UUID in cookies on header in request object. Callback with updated request object passed in
Presence of UUID cookie busts Cloudfront cache
Origin Request Lambda is triggered with UUID present
Origin Request Lambda calls original request URL again via http.get with UUID cookie set (40KB limit makes doing this in the Viewer Request Lambda impractical)
Second scenario for Viewer Request Lambda, seeing UUID now present, strips the UUID cookie then continues the request normally
Second Origin Request if not yet cached - Cached response if cached, as cache-busting UUID is not present - returns actual page HTML to First Origin Request
First Origin Request receives response from http.get containing HTML
First Origin Request creates custom response object containing response body from http.get and Set-Cookie header set with our original UUID
Subsequent calls, having the UUID already set, will strip the UUID from the cookie (to prevent cache busting) and skip directly to the second-scenario in the Viewer Request Lambda which will directly load the cached version of the page.
I say "somewhat" because when I try to hit my endpoint, I get a binary file downloaded.
EDIT
This is because I was not setting the content-type header. I now have only a 302 redirect problem... if I overcome this I'll post a full answer.
Original question
I have a function on the Viewer Request that picks an option and sets some things in the request before it's retrieved from the cache or server.
That works, but I want it to remember that choice for future users. The thought is to simply set a cookie I can read the next time that user comes through. As this is on the Viewer Request and not the Viewer Response I haven't figured out how to make that happen, or if it even is possible via the Lambda itself.
Viewer Request ->
Lambda picks options (needs to set cookie) ->
gets corresponding content ->
returns to Viewer with set-cookie header intact
I have seen the examples and been able to set cookies successfully in the Viewer Response via a Lambda. That doesn't help me much as the decision needs to be made on the request. Quite unsurprisingly adding this code into the Viewer Request shows nothing in the response.
I would argue that the really correct way to set a nonexistent cookie would be to return a 302 redirect to the same URI with Set-Cookie, and let the browser redo the request. This probably would not have much of an impact since the browser can reuse the same connection to "follow" the redirect.
But if you insist on not doing it that way, then you can inject the cookie into the request with your Viewer Request trigger and then emit a Set-Cookie with the same value in your Viewer Response trigger.
The request object, in a viewer response event, can be found at the same place where it's found in the original request event, event.Records[0].cf.request.
In a viewer-response trigger, this part of the structure contains the "request that CloudFront received from the viewer and that might have been modified by the Lambda function that was triggered by a viewer request event."
Use caution to ensure that you handle the cookie header correctly. The Cookie request header requires careful and accurate manipulation because the browser can use multiple formats when multiple cookies exist.
Once upon a time, cookies were required to be sent as a single request header.
Cookie: foo=bar; buzz=fizz
Parse these by splitting the values on ; followed by <space>.
But the browser may also split them with multiple headers, like this:
Cookie: foo=bar
Cookie: buzz=fizz
In the latter case, the array event.Records[0].cf.request.headers.cookie will contain multiple members. You need to examine the value attribute of each object in that array, check for multiple values within each, as well as accommodating the fact that the array will be completely undefined (not empty) if no cookies exist.
Bonus: Here's a function I wrote, that I believe correctly handles all cases including the case where there are no cookies. It will extract the cookie with the name you are looking for. Cookie names are case-sensitive.
// extract a cookie value from request headers, by cookie name
// const my_cookie_value = extract_cookie(event.Records[0].cf.request.headers,'MYCOOKIENAME');
// returns null if the cookie can't be found
// https://stackoverflow.com/a/55436033/1695906
function extract_cookie(headers, cname) {
const cookies = headers['cookie'];
if(!cookies)
{
console.log("extract_cookie(): no 'Cookie:' headers in request");
return null;
}
// iterate through each Cookie header in the request, last to first
for (var n = cookies.length; n--;)
{
// examine all values within each header value, last to first
const cval = cookies[n].value.split(/;\ /);
const vlen = cval.length;
for (var m = vlen; m--;)
{
const cookie_kv = cval[m].split('=');
if(cookie_kv[0] === cname)
{
return cookie_kv[1];
}
} // for m (each value)
} // for n (each header)
// we have no match if we reach this point
console.log('extract_cookie(): cookies were found, but the specified cookie is absent');
return null;
}
Are you able to add another directory: with the first cookie setter request, return (from the lambda) a redirect which includes the cookie-set header, that redirects to your actual content?
OK, long way round but:
Take cookie instruction from the incoming request
Set this somewhere (cache, etc)
Let the request get your object
on the Response, also call a function that reads the (cache) and sets the set-cookie header on the response if needed?
It's been more than one year since the question was published. I hope you found a solution and you can share it with us!
I am facing the same problem and I've thinking also about the infinite loop... What about this?
The viewer request event sends back a 302 response with the cookie set, e.g. uuid=whatever and a GET parameter added to the URL in the Location header, e.g. _uuid_set_=1.
In the next viewer request where the GET parameter _uuid_set_ is set (and equals 1, but this is not needed), there will be two options:
Either the cookie uuid is not set, in which case you can send back a response 500 to break the loop, or whatever fits your needs,
or the cookie is set, in which case you send another 302 back with the parameter _uuid_set_ removed, so that it is never seen by the end user and cannot be copy-pasted and shared and we all can sleep at night.

API Gateway not retrieving request body

I'm trying to create a POST endpoint in API gateway with request body in application/json type. Now, in input body mapping template, I want to check if the input is there and if the required fields are present or not. I tried getting input body using $input.body and also tried $input.json('$') and $input.path('$'). Nothing works, input body is always empty, although the $input.body == "" check always returns false. But in the test logs i can see that the body is passed through. I'm using Mock as integration type. What can be an issue?

Trying To Insert Key/value Pairs To The Request Body With Postman

I am trying to insert key/value pairs to the request body in Postman, but I cannot do it! I click/double-click the body area, but nothing seems to happen.
I am stuck at this screen:
How can I add another JSON entry manually?
Looking at the screen shot, looks like you are trying to edit Response body rather than the Request body.
Postman only allows editing request body (which is logical).
If you want to use this response body contents in other request, copy and paste it in other request body and then edit it.

Kosher way to send data to REST service

Suppose, I have a GET, PUT, POST and DELETE methods. I want to have them.
How should a data be sent to each of these methods?
I can send parameter in URL. Parse URL and get value from it.
A value can be sent inside body of request.
A value can be sent inside request's params (?).
What I want as an answer, are links to specifications of how request is made, what is sent, what is used for what. Also, I want 'English' explanation :-)
Also, links on each method. Specifically, I'm interested in passing values to service for each method.
I want to understand how it works on low level.