API Testing Tips How To Test APIs Software Testing Basics

You should reduce the number of dependencies your API testing process relies on, in order to make testing faster and more efficient. Try to simulate the real conditions that you expect will affect the API in production or upon public release. This ensures your tests reflect the API’s functionality and performance in an accurate context.

This is a unit test that covers the database testing part. For example, writing test data to the DB and afterwards verifying it is properly stored. Unit testing ensures that API components will function properly. In this article we will learn how to cover JUnit REST API testing with Spring Boot.

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Then we can interpret these status codes to know what kind of response the server has sent for a particular request. Status codes are mainly classified into five categories as shown in the table below. The main purpose of the API Testing is to check the functionality, reliability, performance, and security of the API . In this testing, we use software to send calls to the programming interface, get the output, and make a note of the system’s response. In any other testing, standard user inputs and outputs are usually tested. Generally, APIs of an application are used to manipulate its resources.

REST is not able to impose the security restriction inherently. However, it inherits them with the help of implementing protocols. Thus, the integration of SSL/TLS authentication needs to be done very carefully for better security measures of the REST APIs.

What is the workflow of the application; and where is the API in that flow?

Rest stands for Representational State Transfer and is an architectural style for communication with web services. An API or Application Programming Interface is a set of programming instructions used to access a web-based software application. The APIs built using REST is called REST APIs which we have discussed in an earlier article. As we know API stands for Application Programming Interface which acts as an intermediate of communication between two applications.

API Testing is critical for the software systems to perform at high-quality. This post covers the basics of API Testing, its types, the testing approach, best practices and tool used for this testing. Many testers will definitely need to face interview questions when applying for a QA job. The web API testing interview questions below have been collected from the test professionals to help you get ready for a new role. More than just an API interview, this list of content will also benefit both freshers and senior testers who would like to achieve both general and advanced knowledge in REST API testing. Burp Suite is an incredibly powerful web application proxy that also performs security vulnerability analysis.

Sometimes you can’t find bugs without a fine-tooth comb. REST Assured is a Java library for testing RESTful APIs. It is widely used to test JSON and XML-based web applications. In addition, it fully supports all REST methods like the GET, PUT, POST, PATCH, and DELETE. Next, we will see a detailed walkthrough of testing one REST API using the Rest Assured library. API security is a critical concern at most organizations.

Step 4: Setting up the Unit Tests for the APIs

Whitebox tests provide the assessor with all the information they need so they can correctly identify and focus on attacking the weakest links as quickly and effectively as possible. API testing is a type of software testing that involves testing APIs directly. API is a part of integration testing to check whether the API meets expectations in terms of functionality, reliability, performance, and security of applications. In API testing, our primary focus is on Business Logic Layer of the software architecture. These are 7 rest assured API automation testing interview questions and answers to give you a knowledge of REST assured, RESTful web services, URI, and the types of HTTP methods. If we right-click anywhere in the raw message, we can send it to a number of different parts of Burp Suite, but let’s start by sending it to Repeater.

The first constraint of the REST API states that the Client and server has to communicate and agree to certain rules based on resources and with proper encoding like UTF-8 extra. End-to-End testing can be done by the testers either manually using tools like Postman and SOAP UI or automated using HTTPClient or Rest-Assured libraries. Like any another software application, APIs are tested in order to identify bugs, security vulnerabilities, inconsistencies, or failures within the API. She has sound testing knowledge in Rest API testing, Web & Mobile App (Android & iOS) testing, GUI, Functional, Integration, System, Ad-hoc, Usability, Data Base, Smoke, Regression and Retesting. In her quality testing career, she has learned alot about Selenium IDE, WebDriver and OATS automation Testing Tools.

Codoid guarantees your product and services are ready to take on the world with our top-notch OTT testing. Bright has been built from the ground up with a dev first approach to test your web applications, with a specific focus on API security testing. API testing often involves dependencies, such as third-party services, external servers and legacy systems.

API Testing Interview Questions

If the application is functioning properly, the results of the REST API automation test will fall into the 2xx range. A response in the 3xx range usually does not affect user experience and is not considered an error. The whole purpose of API testing is end to end testing of the functionality.Unit testing is done by the developer. In unit testing every functionality is separately tested. Postman is one of the most popular software testing tools which is used for API testing. Postman is widely used by both software testers and developers for testing as it is easy to integrate with Continuous Integration & Continuous Development Pipelines.

• So, we’ll be breaking up SQL injections from XSS injections, for example.
• GET– The GET method is used to extract information from the given server using a given URI.
• Positive testVerify that the API receives input and returns the expected output as specified in the requirement.
• As one of the leading QA companies, we have been doing our manual Rest API testing using Postman whenever it was deemed necessary.
• Web App Development Be it a robust back-end solution or a front-end that provides the best user experience, Codoid is always the top-end choice.
• The first digit of the status code defines the class of response.

API acts as an interface between two software applications by allowing them to communicate with each other. 2.Web services developed using REST style are known as RESTful web services. These web services use HTTP methods to implement the concept of REST architecture. Refer Spring Boot Rest Assured Example to understand how to extract and validate the response. The Payload in REST API is the actual data pack that is sent with the GET method in HTTP. Its the crucial information that you submit to the server when making an API request.

Negative testing—tests that use both valid and invalid user inputs to assess how well the application handles problematic scenarios. Basic positive tests—also known as happy paths, these tests check the API’s acceptance criteria and basic functionality. Security testing—API security is a critical concern for production APIs.

Compare the whole response body content with the expected information

Authentication is performed by transmitting the password in an encrypted form. Which enables the system to ensures and confirms a user’s identity. Many of the services that we use every day rely on hundreds of different interconnected APIs, if any one of them fails then the service will not work. If we have JSON, XML APIs we should verify it’s that all the keys are coming. The server can store the Code or logic to themselves and transfer it whenever needed rather client-side logic. Another point they should communicate with the Self-descriptive Messages e.g Use the same MIME types.

This lets you see if the API responds well to invalid data, for instance by returning an error message, rather than stopping or crashing. Developers and testers commonly delete the API responses from tests. However, all responses should be retained for posterity, so they can be used as https://globalcloudteam.com/ benchmarks for the functioning of each iteration. If a future change to the API causes an error, the record of API responses will allow developers or testers to investigate the error and compare it to previous iterations. This makes it easier to identify the exact cause of the error.

As the application scales up, it can often face performance issues. So, it is better to have load/performance tests from start. Last but not least, besides API testing, do you need to perform other types of testing, such as WebUI or data source?

Step 3: Write Your Unit Test via JUnit

If some data is frequently accessed, then caching it at the server would have a positive impact on REST server performance in production. Since RESTful Web Services work on top of HTTP, it is important to ensure proper web service security is implemented to avoid unauthorized access, snooping and DDoS attacks. Sometimes the design of REST layer could be done in haste leading to unwanted data being sent back and forth from REST server to client. REpresentational State Transfer, commonly known with the acronym REST, is an architectural style which deals with creation of web services.

From here we can use Burp Suite’s Repeater function as basically our own Postman and we can replay this packet any number of times, performing minor manual tweaks and observing the response. Once I get a feel with how many different types of error messages and responses the application yields, I’ll right-click the body of the known-good request and send it to the intruder. From the above table, we can deduce that if the response status code is 2xx, it means the application is functioning as it should be. The status code 1xx, 2xx, 3xx are not considered errors but are informative messages and these codes will not affect the user experience.

For example, the output of the “Create user” API will be the input of the “Get user” API for verification. The output of the “Get user” API can api testing best practices be used as the input of the “Update user” API, and so on. Mobile Testing Click-and-run cloud environments for native apps and mobile browsers.

She is also well versed in programming C, SQL, Core Java, JavaScript and Python. The above information related to API testing using the Rest-Assured and Postman tool clearly differentiates both Manual Testing and Test Automation roles. Moreover, it depicts how REST Assured API testing simplifies the process to test and validate RestAPI without any complexities.