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How to Setup Postman to make Mutual TLS API Calls

If you are planning to use Postman for testing the api you will need to make the following changes to support Mutual TLS.

General Postman Settings​

Open the general settings panel by clicking the wrench icon in the upper left corner

Postman Settings Menu Upper Right Corner

Under the General tab turn off SSL certificate verification

Postman SSL certification verification switch

Switch to the Certificates tab and add the development certificate with the following settings:

  • Host primelocal
  • Port 9443
  • CRT File config/tls/devlocal-mtls.cer
  • KEY File config/tls/devlocal-mtls.key

Postman client cert settings

Postman Environment settings​

You will need to configure the base url for development or other environment you plan to connect to. Click on the gear icon near the environment pull down in the upper right of the application.

Postman open environment dialog

This will open the Manage Environments dialog. Select Add in the lower right corner

Postman environment dialog

Fill in the following details in the add new dialog and click Add

  • Variable baseUrl
  • Initial Value https://primelocal:9443/prime/v1
  • Current Value https://primelocal:9443/prime/v1

Postman environment add dialog

Once you have added this environment and closed the dialog select the new environment from the pull down.

Postman select environment

Troubleshooting Postman​

  1. ECONNREFUSED error in Postman

    If you see an error that looks like the following, Postman cannot connect to your server.

    Postman ECONNREFUSED error

    Solution: Make sure your server is running with make server_run.

  2. Unauthorized

    If the endpoint returns Unauthorized, this could mean that your DB was unpopulated and the server was unable to find your authorization.

    The authorization for the devlocal certifications is stored in the milmove database. Perhaps your database does not contain the authorization? One common reason is that you have an old or empty database.

    Solution: Make sure you have a up-to-date and populated DB by running make db_dev_e2e_populate

  3. Socket hang up / TLS handshake error

    If you see an error that say socket hangup, the server hung up on Postman, likely due to authentication.

    Postman ECONNREFUSED error

    This could be a certs related issue. Check your server log in the terminal, do you see a TLS handshake error?

    2021-01-29T02:20:25.902Z ERROR http/server.go:3093 http: TLS handshake error from 127.0.0.1:61467: tls: client didn't provide a certificate

    If so, this means Postman did not send your certificates successfully to the server when making the request, OR the server did not send the correct cert back.

    Solution: Make sure you have your devlocal-mtls.cer and devlocal-mtls.key set up as described above in General Postman Settings. This ensures you are sending the correct cert.

    If you are using devlocal, the server does not send a correct certificate back. Check that you have SSL certificate verification set to off in the Settings, this ensures you are not trying to verify that certificate.