PropertyList is not defined in pre-request script

[ataul (Ataul Munim)]

Hi folks, I’m trying to emulate the behavior of Ruby’s encode_www_form in a pre-release script. (If there’s a quick way to do this, I’d appreciate that, but otherwise, this is the issue I’m currently facing:)

pm.request.body.urlencoded is a PropertyList. It even says so in Postman when I hover over it.

When I try any methods on it (e.g. map) it says that PropertyList is not defined. Do I need to import it somehow? Here is a public workspace showing the issue:

https://www.postman.com/ataulmunim/workspace/ataul-s-public-workspace/request/3802821-9bc519e6-3792-45e9-b35d-6b0a7a36326f?ctx=documentation

I’ve tried it on the web and also on the OS X native app (Apple silicon).

[danny-dainton]

Hey @ataul

Welcome to the Postman Community!

I’m not sure what your use case is or what you’re trying to achieve but you’d need to use this at the top of the script, to make that work:

PropertyList = require('postman-collection').PropertyList

The postman-collection is an external module that’s part of the scripts sandbox:

Postman Sandbox API | Postman Learning Center

[ataul (Ataul Munim)]

@danny-dainton

PropertyList = require('postman-collection').PropertyList

Thanks Danny, this works! Is the dot notation after the require something that’s Postman-specific or is this a common language feature?

@danny-dainton

I’m not sure what your use case is or what you’re trying to achieve...

At the moment, I’m trying to URI encode the keys/values from a form body and join them back up with &. When I used encodeURI or encodeURIComponent, it also transformed the & which wasn’t what I needed. Accessing the property list means I can map the entries into the format I need:

// for key: "password", value: "at_next_@_and_next_&"

PropertyList = require('postman-collection').PropertyList
console.log(pm.request.body.urlencoded.toString())
console.log(pm.request.body.urlencoded.map(encode).join('&'))

function encode(entry) {
    return `${encodeURIComponent(entry.key)}=${encodeURIComponent(entry.value)}`
}

// "password=at_next_@_and_next_%26"
// "password=at_next_%40_and_next_%26"

[danny-dainton]

It’s a common language feature and it allows you to access a function inside the object. I’m not even going to pretend like I know this topic inside out, I really don’t but I know you can do that.

In terms of the Postman Sandbox, if you remove the .PropertyList and then added a . again, you’d be shown the other functions.