Thunderclient how to pass a response value to the next request

Question

I want to use thunderclient to test an http api.

The steps below are all working

 +--------+                                         +------------------+
 |        |--1 -- Login with user + pass         -->|  Server          |
 |        |                                         |                  |
 |        |<-2 -- Login reply with access_token  ---|  if user+pass ok |
 |        |                                         |                  |
 |        |--3 -- checkConfig-request with token -->|  check token     |
 | Client |                                         |                  |
 |        |<-4 -- Reply with payload             ---|  if token ok     |
 +--------+                                         +------------------+

But currently i copy the value of access_token from step 2 into step 3 and then send the request manually.

This is the reply from step 2

{
  "access_token": "---best---kept---secret---",
  "expires_in": 300,
  "refresh_expires_in": 0,
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "not-before-policy": 1626860494,
  "scope": ""
}

I want to use the value from access_token from the Login-Reply (2) pass it to a variable {{access_token_cc}} and then use this variable to pass the value of access_token as the Bearer Token in the checkConfig-request (3) (see screen)

Question - how to use a variable?

I do not quite understand how to create a variable and assign a value to it. There is a video on youtube but the step to put the pieces together is to brief and not really explained.

Answer 1

rioV8 did point out from the documentation how to "connect / wire up" a variable to a value in the reply. Because the docs do not contain any images the screenshots below hopefully help to illustrate how to set up variables.

Example to create and assign a variable

To be able to use a variable three things must be done

1. Create: Create a variable as part of an environment. Switch to tab Env, create a New Environment. Inside it create a variable fruitShop.next_url and optionally assign an initial value. Set the Environment to active.
2. Assign: Switch to tab collection, create a new collection, add a request. For a request under the tab test the value of a response field can be assigned to a variable - see screen below json.access_token = {{access_token_cc}}
3. Use: In a request you can use a variable from your active Environment with the syntax {{yourvariable}}.

The fruitShop-REST-API (german) reply returns a json structure like this

{
  "meta": { "count": 32, "limit": 10, "page": 1
          ,"next_url": "/shop/products/?page=2&limit=10" }
  , "products":[ 
      { "name": "Bananas", "product_url": "/shop/products/3"}
      , { ... }]
}

Create

In the screen you can see

• the environment fruitShop
• and some variables - for example fruitShop.next_url and fruitShop.count; both with initial values.

Assign

To assign a value to the variable you need to switch to the tab collections

• Create a collection (here fruitShop) and
• Add a request (here Get Products 1)
• Click the request (here Get Products 1) and switch to the tab test.

With the option Set Environment Variable you can assign a response value to a variable.

In the screen the response fields (json.meta.count and json.meta.next_url) are assigned to variables from your envirionment:

// response field       environment variable
json.meta.count = {{fruitShop.count}}
json.meta.next_url = {{fruitShop.next_url}}

Use

You can now use the variable with this syntax {{yourVariable}}

Answer 2

According to the documentation

Set the source of the variable to json.access_token

Determine which type of environment you want to store it to