Postman Collection

Postman is a popular tool used to test HTTP Requests to API endpoints. HPE Aruba Networking Central offers a Postman collection that you can use to test REST APIs that are available here.

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Postman Definitions

• A collection is a set of API endpoints or requests, along with each endpoint's authorization type, parameters, headers, request bodies, tests, and settings grouped together.
• A environment is a set of one or more variables that you can reference when sending requests or writing test script in Postman.

This guides walks you through setting up Postman to make API calls using our Postman collection. It provides two options for setting up authentication:

1. If you already have an access token, you can paste it directly into the Postman Environment and proceed
2. If you don't have an access token, you can generate one using the Generate Access Token API in the Postman collection

Forking the Postman Collection & Environment

To begin, fork the Postman collection & environment into your workspace:

1. Go to the New HPE Aruba Networking Central Postman Workspace. You can do this from the Postman website or application, which can be installed from here.
2. Within the workspace, click on the New HPE Aruba Networking Central collection which is pinned on the workspace's overview page. This will take you to the New HPE Aruba Networking Central collection and set the New HPE Aruba Networking Central ENV as the active environment of the collection.
3. Fork the HPE Aruba Networking Central collection and HPE Aruba Networking Central ENV environment to your personal Postman workspace. This will enable you to make API requests to HPE Aruba Networking Central using this Postman collection.

This ensures you have your own customizable copy of the collection & environment

Setting up the Environment

1. In your workspace, go to the Environments tab in Postman.
2. Select the New HPE Aruba Networking Central ENV & click the checkmark icon to set it as the active environment.
3. Configure the following variables in the environement:
   1. baseUrl - This URL will be based on the geographical cluster in which your Central account is provisioned. You can find the base URLs for all the new Central clusters in this table.
   2. bearerToken - Access Token is required to securely make an API Request to New HPE Aruba Networking Central API Gateway. If you already have an access token, paste it here. This will allow you to skip token generation & make API calls immediately.
   3. client_id and client_secret - Leave these blank if you've provided a token. If you don't have an access token, enter your API client credentials for new Central to generate one. You can find steps to generate API client credentials here.

Generating an Access Token (If needed)

If you don't have an access token, follow these steps to generate one:

1. Open the Generate Access Token API within the Authentication folder in the Postman Collection
2. Verify that client_id, and client_secret are set in the active environment. You can find steps to generate API client credentials here.
3. Execute the request by clicking on Send
4. Upon success, the generated access token will automatically be stored in the bearerToken variable in the environment

This API method eliminates the need to manually copy & paste tokens between applications, making it easy for you to build automation workflows within Postman

Making API Calls

To make API calls to new Central from Postman:

1. Ensure that the New HPE Aruba Networking Central ENV is active & the baseUrl, and bearerToken variables are set.
2. Select the desired API request from the collection.
3. Configure any API parameters if required.
4. Click Send to execute the API request

Example: Get a list of Access Points

To retrieve a list of access points, use the Get a list of Access Points API request from the collection. This API requires no mandatory API parameters, making it simple to execute out of the box.

1. Ensure that the New HPE Aruba Networking Central ENV is active & the baseUrl, and bearerToken variables are set.
2. Navigate to the Get a list of Access Points API in the Postman Collection
3. Optionally, configure the following query parameters as needed in the request's Params tab on Postman
   1. filter: Apply filters to narrow the API results(Supports OData Version 4.0 filter string)
   2. sort: Comma separated list of sort expressions.
   3. limit: Denotes the maximum number of access points returned in the response.(Default is 20)
   4. next: Specifies the pagination cursor for the next page of resources.
      You can find more details of the API's parameter on the API Reference guide
4. Click Send to execute the request.
5. If successful, the response will return a list of access points, optional filtered as per the API parameters.