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Intercepting Cookies for Postman

Please follow these initial setup instructions first!

For these APIs, we need to supply Postman with the appropriate session cookies from a logged-in user. One way to do this is the Interceptor Chrome extension from Postman. It creates a connection between Chrome and Postman that lets Chrome capture the cookies from a browser session and pass them on to your Postman app. We'll use Interceptor in Chrome to capture cookies as we log in to the app, and then switch to Postman to make the request.

This doc will take you through the following steps:

Install Postman and Interceptor​

  • Install Postman

  • Install Postman Interceptor for Chrome

  • Open Postman and follow these instructions for installing Interceptor. Pasted below:

    • Navigate to the Postman app and click the satellite icon in the upper-right corner to Capture requests and cookies with Postman. You can then enable those two features in their respective tabs. Under Requests, change Source to Interceptor.

    • Select Install Interceptor Bridge to download the Bridge, an independent executable that facilitates communication with the Interceptor.

    • If you're on Windows or Linux, Postman will take care of everything for you. If you're on MacOS, you'll be prompted to install NodeJS if it's not already installed on your computer.

    • Confirm Interceptor is ready to use by checking that the Interceptor connected status is green. You can now capture requests from your browser and cookies from any domain to use in Postman.

  • Turn on cookie syncing for Milmove domains.

    • Click again on the satellite icon and click on the Cookies tab.

    • Make sure Capture Cookies is toggled On.

    • Under Domains, add the following domains:

      • admin.stg.move.mil
      • adminlocal
      • office.stg.move.mil
      • officelocal

      Screenshot of Postman Interceptor settings

Find and transfer the necessary cookies​

We’ll run through an example with the Admin API.

  • In your terminal, make server_run and make admin_client_run

  • In the Admin app, click Local Sign In and log in as an admin user.

  • In Postman, make GET request to an Admin endpoint. e.g. http://adminlocal:3000/webhook_subscriptions

  • Some people have luck with Interceptor successfully updating all cookies on the first try, and you may get a 200 here! But it’s common to get a 403 Unauthorized at this point. To fix, we’ll update the admin_session_token manually in Postman.

  • In Chrome, open up dev tools -> Application -> Cookies -> Copy the token for admin_session_token

  • In Postman, click the Cookies link in your Request view. You should see three values populated. Click the admin_session_token cookie, paste in your new value, and save.

Screenshot of Cookies link in Postman

Screenshot of Cookies view in Postman

  • Retry the GET request. You should receive a 200!

Form a working GET and PATCH request in Postman​

At this point, you’ve already made a successful GET request. Now that your session token is updated and Interceptor is working, you should be able to make any GET requests without further setup.

To do a POST, PUT, or PATCH request, you'll need to add a new header.

  • In Postman, click the cookies link in your Request view. You should see three values populated. Click the masked_gorilla_csrf cookie, and copy the value.

  • In the Request view, click Headers. Add a header for your request with the key X-CSRF-TOKEN and value <masked_gorilla_csrf value you copied>

Screenshot of how to update a header in Postman

  • Add your Request body for your update, and hit Send. Success!

Troubleshooting​

Can't connect to Postman's request interceptor after install?

  • It's possible that ~/.postman/InterceptorBridge/InterceptorBridge is trying to look for a local install of Node.
    • Try installing Node with brew install node
    • Then restart the Postman desktop app