How to chain requests using Insomnia (get token from login api to use as header for other api)

Question

I'm trying to update the header for my apis with a sif token that is retrieved from another login call. I know how to do this in Postman by going to the Tests tab and adding something like this there for the login api which would set my global variable.

var data = JSON.parse(responseBody);
postman.setGlobalVariable("SIF_TEACHER", data.sifToken);

However, I read this tutorial from their official support page but can't really understand it and couldn't find any other doc on chaining requests. If someone would be so kind to share more detailed steps to do this or point me to some doc on the subject please?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

In your workspace press CTRL+E to open "Manage Environments" window

Add a variable like "token" to the environment

Put a response function (teal f) as value of this variable by pressing CTRL+SPACE. Select one to your liking from the dropdown, in your case "Response => Body Attribute" should work well.

This will open a "Tag" form, like this one:

Select your login request and filter the response json or xml for the value containing your token value, f.e. $.access_token. Probably set trigger behaviour to "When Expired" too.

You can now access this variable anywhere in your workspace for other requests by pressing CTRL+SPACE in any form field and selecting the variable (purple x).

If you only need this for one request, you can skip setting up the environment variable for this and directly put the function where you need it, same way as described before.