How to handle binary responses in Postman which when saving, save it as docx file

I am trying to process a API response, which is of type binary (please see screen shot of API response about how it looks). I want to perform validation of file contents post downloading/saving it to .docx file. Can any one point me in right direction on how we can achieve the same.
APIBinaryResponse

Hi @ashkht !

Great question. Handling binary responses in Postman, especially for files like .docx, should be straightforward once you get the hang of it :slight_smile:

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you:

  1. Receiving Binary Responses:
  • Ensure your request headers are set up to accept binary data (e.g., Accept: application/octet-stream).
  • Send the request and wait for the response. The response will look garbled or show up as unreadable text in Postman’s response viewer because it’s a binary representation of the .docx file.
  1. Saving the Binary Response:
  • Once you’ve received the binary response, click on the “Save Response” button (or right-click in the response section).
  • Choose “Save to a file”.
  • Save the file with a .docx extension to your desired location.
  1. Validating File Contents:
  • Since .docx files are essentially zipped XML files, you’ll need specialized libraries or tools to read and validate their contents programmatically.
  • If you just want to manually verify the contents, you can open the saved .docx file using Microsoft Word or a similar word processing software.
  • For automated validations, consider using libraries like mammoth.js (for JavaScript) or python-docx (for Python) in your test scripts outside of Postman.

Unfortunately, directly validating the contents of a .docx file within Postman’s scripting environment might be a challenge due to the complex nature of Word files. Most users validate such files outside Postman in a more robust development environment tailored to their needs.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.