Combine postman collections within the same workspace?

New to APIs/Postman
4

Ah, I see – totally misread that first post :sweat_smile:. There are three ways (that I can think of) to go about combining two collections.

Using the GUI
Individual requests and folders can be dragged and dropped into different collections within the same workspace. This is a bit clunky if there are a lot of individual requests in a collection.

Using the API
The Postman API is pretty great – you can update collections by sending a PUT request to the Update Collection endpoint with whatever information you’d like to update it within the request body. It’ll require some copy/pasting but here’s a generic overview of what the flow would look like:

  1. Generate a Postman API key - Postman

  2. Retrieve all of your collections via the GET All Collections endpoint. Responses will look something like:

{
  "collections": [
    {
      "id": "dac5eac9-148d-a32e-b76b-3edee9da28f7",
      "name": "Cloud API",
      "owner": "631643",
      "uid": "631643-dac5eac9-148d-a32e-b76b-3edee9da28f7"
    },
    {
      "id": "f2e66c2e-5297-e4a5-739e-20cbb90900e3",
      "name": "Sample Collection",
      "owner": "631643",
      "uid": "631643-f2e66c2e-5297-e4a5-739e-20cbb90900e3"
    },
    {
      "id": "f695cab7-6878-eb55-7943-ad88e1ccfd65",
      "name": "Postman Echo",
      "owner": "631643",
      "uid": "631643-f695cab7-6878-eb55-7943-ad88e1ccfd65"
    }
  ]
}

  1. Save the UIDs of the two collections you want to combine (not the id)

  2. Retrieve the collection that’s to be combined into the main collection (let’s call it C1) and save the response - the response will look something like:

{
  "collection": {
    "variables": [],
    "info": {
      "name": "Sample Collection",
      "_postman_id": "f2e66c2e-5297-e4a5-739e-20cbb90900e3",
      "description": "This is a sample collection that makes a tiny request to Postman Echo service to get the list of request headers sent by a HTTP client.",
      "schema": "https://schema.getpostman.com/json/collection/v2.0.0/collection.json"
    },
    "item": [
      {
        "id": "82ee981b-e19f-962a-401e-ea34ebfb4848",
        "name": "Request Headers",
        "event": [
          {
            "listen": "test",
            "script": {
              "type": "text/javascript",
              "exec": "var responseJSON;\ntry {\n    tests[\"Body contains headers\"] = responseBody.has(\"headers\");\n    responseJSON = JSON.parse(responseBody);\n    tests[\"Header contains host\"] = \"host\" in responseJSON.headers;\n    tests[\"Header contains test parameter sent as part of request header\"] = \"my-sample-header\" in responseJSON.headers;\n}\ncatch (e) { }\n\n\n\n"
            }
          }
        ],
        "request": {
          "url": "https://echo.getpostman.com/headers",
          "method": "GET",
          "header": [
            {
              "key": "my-sample-header",
              "value": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet",
              "description": ""
            }
          ],
          "body": {
            "mode": "formdata",
            "formdata": []
          },
          "description": ""
        },
        "response": []
      }
    ]
  }
}

  1. Retrieve the collection you’d like to combine everything into (Let’s call it C2) using the GET Single Collection endpoint and save that response as well.

  2. Create a PUT request to the Update Collection endpoint (this will update C2). In the body of the request, add C2’s response and add all of the items you’d like from C1 (Items are individual requests or folders).

Stitch the JSON Together
Export the two collections from the app – they’ll be downloaded as JSON files. Inspect the two JSON files and copy/paste any of the items you want from one collection to the other and re-import back into the app. The important thing here is to make sure that you’re following the schema for the particular collection version you’re using.

That’s a whole lotta information so feel free to send over any other questions you may have. The Postman API documentation page has a Run in Postman button on the top right that’ll allow you to import the API collection directly into the app to use.

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