Laravel Postman Exporter

Automatically generate Postman Collection v2.1 files and OpenAPI 3.0 specifications from your Laravel application routes, controllers, and FormRequest validations — complete with hierarchical folder grouping and response examples.

✨ Features

• 🔍 Route Scanning — Automatically reads all registered API routes
• 📝 Request Analysis — Extracts validation rules from FormRequest classes and inline $request->validate() calls
• 🎯 Smart Example Data — Generates realistic sample values based on validation rules and field names
• 🔐 Authentication Detection — Automatically adds auth headers based on middleware (Sanctum, Passport, etc.)
• 📁 Hierarchical Grouping — Organizes requests into nested folders based on route prefixes
• 📋 Response Examples — Extracts response structures from PHPDoc, API Resources, response()->json(), and Eloquent models
• 📄 OpenAPI Support — Export your API as a valid OpenAPI 3.0.3 specification
• 🚀 Postman Upload — Optionally upload collections directly via the Postman API
• ⚡ Artisan Command — Beautiful CLI with progress indicators and colored output

📦 Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require hopheartsceo/laravel-postman-exporter --dev

Installation from GitHub (Development)

If you haven't published to Packagist yet, add this to your composer.json:

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "vcs",
        "url": "https://github.com/hopheartsceo/laravel-postman-exporter"
    }
],
"require": {
    "hopheartsceo/laravel-postman-exporter": "dev-main"
}

Publish the configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=postman-exporter-config

🚀 Usage

Artisan Command

# Export as Postman Collection (default)
php artisan postman:export

# Export as OpenAPI 3.0 specification
php artisan postman:export --format=openapi

# Custom output path
php artisan postman:export --output=./docs/api-spec.json

# Group routes by prefix (works for both formats)
php artisan postman:export --group-by-prefix

# Include response examples (Postman only currently)
php artisan postman:export --with-responses

Facade API

use Hopheartsceo\PostmanExporter\Facades\PostmanExporter;

// Generate Postman Collection (default)
$collection = PostmanExporter::generate();

// Generate OpenAPI spec
$openapi = PostmanExporter::generate('openapi');

// Generate and save to file
$path = PostmanExporter::save('/path/to/collection.json');

// Generate and upload to Postman
$result = PostmanExporter::upload('your-api-key');

⚙️ Configuration

After publishing, edit config/postman-exporter.php:

Folder Grouping

Routes are grouped into flat, single-level folders by the first segment of the URI. No nesting is created — every route belongs to exactly one top-level folder.

'grouping' => [
    'enabled'         => true,
    'strategy'        => 'prefix',      // Only 'prefix' strategy supported
    'fallback_folder' => 'general',     // Folder for unprefixed / root routes
],

How it works:

• The first segment of the URI (explode('/', $uri)[0]) becomes the folder name.
• Routes whose first segment is empty or a parameter (e.g. {id}) go to the fallback folder.
• There are no root-level requests — every request lives inside a folder.
• There are no nested folders — the structure is always flat.

Response Examples

Response examples are extracted automatically from your controller methods and attached to each Postman request item.

'responses' => [
    'enabled'         => true,
    'fallback_status' => 200,
    'fallback_body'   => ['message' => 'Success'],
],

Or enable at export time with the --with-responses flag:

php artisan postman:export --with-responses

Extraction priority (highest to lowest):

1. PHPDoc @response — Parses @response tags with optional status codes:

   /**
    * @response 200 {"id": 1, "name": "John Doe"}
    * @response {"data": []}
    */
   public function index() { ... }
   

2. API Resource — Detects return new UserResource(...) patterns and reads the Resource's $fillable/$visible fields.

3. response()->json() — Parses inline response()->json([...], 200) calls to extract the body and status code.

4. Eloquent Model — Detects return User::find(...) patterns and generates example data from the model's $fillable fields.

5. Fallback — Uses the configured fallback_status and fallback_body.

Generated response format in Postman:

{
    "response": [
        {
            "name": "Success Response",
            "originalRequest": { "method": "GET", "url": { ... } },
            "status": "OK",
            "code": 200,
            "_postman_previewlanguage": "json",
            "header": [
                { "key": "Content-Type", "value": "application/json" }
            ],
            "body": "{\"id\": 1, \"name\": \"John Doe\"}"
        }
    ]
}

Route Filters

'route_filters' => [
    'include_prefixes'  => [],              // Only include these prefixes
    'exclude_prefixes'  => ['_ignition'],   // Exclude these prefixes
    'include_middleware' => [],              // Only include routes with these middleware
    'exclude_middleware' => [],              // Exclude routes with these middleware
],

Middleware to Headers Map

'middleware_to_headers_map' => [
    'auth:sanctum' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer {{token}}',
    ],
    'auth:api' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer {{token}}',
    ],
],

📄 Example Output

The generated collection follows the Postman Collection v2.1 schema. Folders are flat (single-level) and each request includes response examples:

{
    "info": {
        "name": "My App API Collection",
        "schema": "https://schema.getpostman.com/json/collection/v2.1.0/collection.json"
    },
    "item": [
        {
            "name": "api",
            "item": [
                {
                    "name": "users.index",
                    "request": {
                        "method": "GET",
                        "url": {
                            "raw": "{{base_url}}/api/users",
                            "host": ["{{base_url}}"],
                            "path": ["api", "users"]
                        },
                        "header": [
                            { "key": "Accept", "value": "application/json" },
                            { "key": "Authorization", "value": "Bearer {{token}}" }
                        ]
                    },
                    "response": [
                        {
                            "name": "Success Response",
                            "originalRequest": {
                                "method": "GET",
                                "url": {
                                    "raw": "{{base_url}}/api/users",
                                    "host": ["{{base_url}}"],
                                    "path": ["api", "users"]
                                }
                            },
                            "status": "OK",
                            "code": 200,
                            "_postman_previewlanguage": "json",
                            "header": [
                                { "key": "Content-Type", "value": "application/json" }
                            ],
                            "body": "{\"data\": [{\"id\": 1, \"name\": \"John Doe\"}]}"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ],
            "description": "Routes for api"
        },
        {
            "name": "general",
            "item": [
                {
                    "name": "GET Status",
                    "request": {
                        "method": "GET",
                        "url": {
                            "raw": "{{base_url}}/status",
                            "host": ["{{base_url}}"],
                            "path": ["status"]
                        }
                    },
                    "response": [
                        {
                            "name": "Success Response",
                            "originalRequest": {
                                "method": "GET",
                                "url": {
                                    "raw": "{{base_url}}/status",
                                    "host": ["{{base_url}}"],
                                    "path": ["status"]
                                }
                            },
                            "status": "OK",
                            "code": 200,
                            "_postman_previewlanguage": "json",
                            "header": [
                                { "key": "Content-Type", "value": "application/json" }
                            ],
                            "body": "{\"message\": \"Success\"}"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ],
            "description": "Routes for general"
        }
    ],
    "variable": [
        { "key": "base_url", "value": "http://localhost" },
        { "key": "token", "value": "your-auth-token-here" }
    ]
}

See examples/sample-collection.json for a full example with multiple folders and response examples.

🧪 Testing

composer test
# or
vendor/bin/phpunit

🏗️ Architecture

📋 Requirements

• PHP 8.1+
• Laravel 10, 11, or 12

📝 License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.