Talk given at Typeform for the Barcelona Bug busters meetup. How to Automate API Testing guides you through a possible API Testing workflow for API Functional Testing exploring different tools and approaches.

1. Bruno Pedro
January 2016
How to Automate
API Testing

2. Summary
• types of API testing
• functional testing
• API exploration
• writing and running tests locally
• automating test execution

3. 3 types of API Testing
• unit testing
• functional testing
• load testing
increased
complexity

4. Unit Testing
• part of the development process
• usually written by developers
• tests how local code integrates with the API
• focused on request and response handling
• automated by a CI process

5. Unit Testing: mocking
• actual API response is saved locally
• test uses local copy of API response
• several tools for different programming languages
• VCR (Ruby)
• nock (Node.js)

6. Functional Testing
• part of the QA process
• a kind of black-box testing
• focused on response generation
• often executed periodically
• tests how the API behaves under a controlled input

7. Functional Testing: identification
• which API calls should be tested
• how are those calls used by the application
• what should be tested
• who should be notified if tests fail

8. Functional Testing: input
• usually fake data
• information that resembles real usage
• often obtained by studying user input
• updated often

9. Functional Testing: output
• tests should be similar to unit tests
• but performed on real API calls
• additional output
• response time
• specific API responses during testing

10. Functional Testing: execution
• manual crafting
• manually triggered
• potentially executed periodically
• result flags CI process

11. API Exploration
• starts in the product development phase
• part of the product definition
• confirmed in the development process
• validated by QA

12. API Exploration: questions
• why are you using the API
• what API calls are used
• how does the product integrate with the API
• what happens if the API fails or is unresponsive

13. API Exploration: hands-on
• getting a list of all the relevant API calls
• obtaining authorization credentials if needed
• preparing fake input data
• exploring the API calls manually

14. API Exploration: hands-on
swagger.io getpostman.com

15. API Exploration: hands-on

16. API Exploration: hands-on
collections are a way to group API calls

17. Local Tests
• one-off testing
• batch testing
• easy to validate
• a way to discover unanticipated API responses

18. Local Tests: hands-on
written in javascript and executed locally

19. Local Tests: hands-on

20. Local Tests: hands-on

21. Automated Tests
• repeatable process
• periodic execution
• possibly flagging CI
• dedicated or SaaS solutions

22. Automated Tests: hands-on
newman
runscope.com

23. Automated Tests: hands-on
test scheduling using Runscope

24. Automated Tests: hands-on
test metrics provided by Runscope

25. Wrap up
• unit and functional API testing
• identification, input, output and execution
• API exploration and introduction to Postman
• local testing with Postman
• automating tests with runscope

26. API Testing Workflow
newman
runscope.comswagger.io postman

27. +
Sean O’Connor
Lead Engineer
It's great to see a tool like API Changelog
come along. (…) as an API provider, it's always
a challenge to communicate to users when
changes happen.
bpedro@apichangelog.com
Get in touch!
Bruno Pedro
Thank you