Postman has introduced two improvements to the authentication and authorization of the interfaces using OAuth 2.0 for the platform of the same name for developing and managing APIs. Developers should now be able to update OAuth 2.0 access tokens more easily. In addition, support for ID tokens is now also available.
Long-awaited feature
The development team at Postman had already announced some changes to its own API platform at the beginning of February. Now the developers emphasized in another current blog entry the importance of OAuth for authentication and authorization of APIs. Among other things, they point out that access tokens in most cases come with a short expiration date, which has forced Postman users to go through the tedious process of regenerating the token each time. Not least because of this, the token update for OAuth 2.0 is one of the most frequently requested functions for the platform.
In the current version of the Postman API platform, it is now easier to renew an OAuth 2.0 token.
A user can use the “Update token” button to trigger this process without having to go through the entire authorization process again. The platform is also able to automatically refresh a token before it expires. If you do not want this, you can optionally deactivate this function by switching off the automatic updating of the token on the corresponding Authentication tab.
ID token support
In addition to the token refresh feature, the development team also added support for ID tokens in OAuth 2.0. This is a type of token used to identify the end user who has authenticated with an OAuth 2.0 provider. Support for ID tokens in Postman should enable users to access the user’s identity information more quickly. This should in turn make it easier to work with OAuth 2.0 authentication in their APIs. Developers can then choose between an access token and an ID token to authenticate their APIs.
(fms)
