title: Send a timstamp in JSON via Postman
body: <p>I'm fairly new to working with REST APIs and Postman and I'm looking for a way to include a timestamp as a string in a POST request body via Postman.</p>
  
  <p>According to the <a href="https://www.getpostman.com/docs/environments" rel="nofollow">Postman docs</a>, there is a dynamic variable <code>{{$timestamp}}</code> which can be used in the request body. However, when I try to use it, I get a 400 back from the endpoint I am POSTing to with the message "malformed data."</p>
  
  <p>Here are a couple of variations I have tried:</p>
  
  <h2>variation 1</h2>
  
  <pre><code>[
      {
          "from_number": "+123456789",
          "messages": [
              {
                  "text":  "Message at" {{$timestamp}},
                  "to_number": "+123456789"
              }
          ]
      }
  ]
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>variation 2</h2>
  
  <pre><code>[
      {
          "from_number": "+123456789",
          "messages": [
              {
                  "text":  "Message at {{$timestamp}}",
                  "to_number": "+123456789"
              }
          ]
      }
  ]
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>variation 3</h2>
  
  <pre><code>[
      {
          "from_number": "+123456789",
          "messages": [
              {
                  "text":  "Message at " + {{$timestamp}},
                  "to_number": "+123456789"
              }
          ]
      }
  ]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All of these have returned the same error</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
    "errorMessage": "malformed data",
    "error": true
  }
  </code></pre>