Navixy is committed to making telematics data easily accessible for partners and developers, continually improving our products to be user-friendly and clear.
In this article, you will learn how to utilise our new Navixy API collection in Postman to streamline your API development process. We will demonstrate how comprehensive documentation for every call and result, along with the ability to instantly test them on real or demo data, makes working with APIs easier and more efficient.
At Navixy, platform flexibility is our priority. Beyond our PaaS and On-Premise solutions, we provide our APIs as a developer-friendly toolkit to streamline development and integration. Our Navixy API collection and Postman environments, backed by comprehensive documentation, enable you to create customised telematics solutions tailored to your customers’ needs.
– Andrey Melnik, the Head of Technical Support in Navixy
Documentation and the trial-and-error method challenges
API integration can be time-consuming and frustrating. Developers often navigate extensive documentation, trying to understand the platform and identify the right methods for their scenarios. Despite call examples and how-to guides, the process remains inefficient.
The main challenge is the lack of immediate testing for different calls to see the returning results and evaluate the convenience of receiving information through them. At that point, developers manually search for the correct calls, going through multiple trial-and-error attempts, which is both time-consuming and error-prone.
Navixy’s API Sandbox: a Postman-powered solution for API testing
To make API development and integration easier and more efficient, we turned to the Postman platform that allows developers to create, test and manage API collections with ease. That's why we're excited to present the Navixy API Sandbox – a new tool for working with API documentation and exploring and testing API queries on real or demo data.
Why did we choose Postman?
Postman is a platform for API development, testing, and management used by over 30 million developers worldwide. It allows creating API requests, running automated tests, and debugging responses. Featuring collaboration workspaces, collections, environments, and documentation generation, Postman simplifies the API development process and enables developers and teams to build, share, and iterate on APIs more effectively. The platform supports and promotes the API-first approach to development, for which it’s been recognised as a Visionary by Gartner several times in a row for the last years.
With the Navixy API Sandbox, everything is straightforward. You can work with data here and now and use the calls you've tried in your collections and automations. Plus, you can use variables and environments, saving you and your developers plenty of time.
To get started with the Navixy API Sandbox, you need to download or use Postman online. Sign into your Postman account or create a new one for free if you don’t have one yet. Then, enter Navixy API Sandbox into the search bar and select it from the list of results.
Our documentation is publicly available for anyone who wants to start working with our APIs. However, if you try to send an API request directly from the documentation, Postman will prompt you to take an additional step before proceeding. This step is necessary to ensure the security of your data and prevent unauthorised access. And we'll get to it right in the next section.
How to work with Navixy API in Postman: workspaces and environments
To start sending API requests, you'll need to create your own fork of our collection.
Important note: If you’re using the Postman app, you need to update it to the latest version to be able to create forks like it’s described here.
To do this, click the Fork button, as shown in the screenshot below.
Next, provide all the necessary information about your fork:
- Fork label – is the name of your fork in your workspace.
- Workspace label – the workspace to which you're adding the fork.
- Environments – environments you want to add to your fork from our collection. You can select all of them or only the necessary ones.
- Notifications – Leave them enabled since it is the way you will receive updates about any changes to our API Sandbox. These notifications will come to the email associated with your Postman account.
Upon creating, your fork will automatically open. The next step is to choose the necessary environment. You can find this in the upper right-hand corner under your account image.
You can as well choose it from the list of environments on the left-side menu. Select the one you need and click Set active.
That's it!
Now, even if you don't have a Navixy account and any trackers connected, you can select the Demo environment and see how the API Sandbox works with different calls.
Let's take, for example, a device status request.
Request example: getting a tracker status from demo account
We‘re going to use the Demo environment in this example. It means API Sandbox will provide you with information from the Navixy demo account.
Let’s get to the request.
Open the Trackers section and locate the Getting tracker list API request.
Send the request and locate the necessary tracker_id in the response.
In the tracker/list response, this is the id that appears before the label. Just highlight and right-click it to copy.
The next step is to locate the last known GPS status request, paste your tracker_id into the parameter field of this API call, and click send to retrieve the necessary information.
You’ll see the last tracker’s status information in the result field.
Use comprehensive documentation on Navixy API in Postman
Consistent and comprehensive documentation is important in API integration and API testing.
Each API call in the Navixy API Sandbox comes with a detailed description of its parameters, including where and in what situations they can be useful. Besides, there’s a description of the response parameters and any potential errors with possible solutions. This information is conveniently located under each API call, so you don't have to spend time searching for it.
By reading the documentation, you'll immediately understand what you need to send, what you'll receive, and what to do if you receive an error instead of the expected result.
We're committed to continuously improving the Navixy API Sandbox. That's why we'll gradually add detailed descriptions to all API calls and update the sandbox with new methods and instructions for working with the platform's data, making it easier for you to build personalised solutions for your customers with ease.
Conclusion: Navixy API exploration made easy
Understanding the necessity for partners and developers to be able to test our telematics API in various scenarios and the importance of clear and consistent documentation, we built the Navixy API Sandbox in Postman. Our aim was to provide a safe testing environment where one could read about various API calls and results in detail and immediately try them to figure out which would fit to address their customers' particular needs.
We hope the Navixy API Sandbox in Postman can help you provide individual solutions to your customers and grow your business.
Want to learn more about the Navixy API? Reach out to our team now and discover how we can help you unlock its full potential.
