Request Inheritance

When working with APIs, it’s common to include similar authentication or headers across many requests. Some of this duplication can be made easier with Variables but this approach still requires setup for each new request.

Workspace or Folder Inheritance

Request inheritance allows defining authentication or headers via the workspace or folder settings dialogs. All child request will automatically inherit these settings.

When sending requests, the settings defined at the lowest level will take precedence. For example, if authentication is defined at both workspace and folder level, the folder authentication will override the workspace. This also means you can override any inherited settings by defining them at the request level, as well.

## Authentication Inheritance

The default authentication setting for new requests is to inherit from the parent. To override the inheritance setting, explicitly set the authentication or chose “No Auth.”

## Header Inheritance

Header inheritance works slightly different than authentication because there can be multiple values defined.

Header prioritization works the same as the headers of an individual request: Headers defined at the bottom take precedence. With inheritance, folder level are added to the top of the headers list, and workspace headers above that. This means that inherited headers can be overridden by defining a header with the same name at the request level.