Before getting started, install the latest version of Postman.

Import the collection

You can easily fork our public API collection to your Postman by clicking the button below:

Configure environments for Sandbox and Production

To set up your environment for quickest development, you can go to the variables tab and add your sandbox appId and appSecret to the collection.

We recommend setting up separate environments for Sandbox and Production. This will enable you to quickly switch between environments without having to manually look up and change your API keys.

To create an environment in Postman:

Select New in the left navigation menu in Postman
Choose Environment to create a new environment
Enter Abound Sandbox for the name of your new environment
Using your keys from our dashboard, enter the following environment variables for your sandbox environment:

Sandbox environment

VARIABLE	INITIAL VALUE	CURRENT VALUE
`baseUrl`	https://sandbox-api.withabound.com/v2	https://sandbox-api.withabound.com/v2
`appId`	`{{appId}}`	Enter your sandbox `appId` – located on the keys page of the Abound Dashboard
`appSecret`	`{{appSecret}}`	Enter your sandbox `appSecret` – located on the keys page of the Abound Dashboard

Production environment

VARIABLE	INITIAL VALUE	CURRENT VALUE
`baseUrl`	https://production-api.withabound.com/v2	https://production-api.withabound.com/v2
`appId`	`{{appId}}`	Enter your production `appId` – located on the keys page of the Abound Dashboard
`appSecret`	`{{appSecret}}`	Enter your production `appSecret` – located on the keys page of the Abound Dashboard

If you use the global environment variables, you must unset the collection variables for the baseUrl, appId, and appSecret

Collection Variables unselected with global environment set to Production

Using the Postman collection

Now that you have your collection and environments configured, you're ready to make our first request. Since Users are our foundational resource of every API call, first create a User.

Select the Collections icon in the left navigation menu
Expand Abound API, Users, and then select Create a user
Ensure you are using the Abound Sandbox environment you created earlier by selecting it in the upper right-hand corner
Click Send to create a user

Creating a user with the Postman collection

Now that you've created your first user, you will need to use the returned userId to make other API calls.

Note the userId from our original request to Create a user
Open the Create expenses request in the Postman collection and hover over the {{userId}} path variable
- You will find that our collection populates the userId we just created
Without additional input, click the Send button to create an expenses for this user

Example of userId being automatically provided for the next request

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Since we are creating multiple expenses in this request, Postman only saves the identifier for the first expense as a collection variable.