APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the lifelines of data-driven applications. It defines how software/applications interact and communicate with each other. APIs are preferred way for implementing data-driven application, as maintaining and developing UI is not required in API implementations.
Emerging technologies like IoT, Data Analytics and Machine Learning are laying foundations for the new paradigm of doing business in Health Services, Financial, Software, Defense and Automobile sectors on a great scale. These technologies leverage APIs for communication between different systems and intra-systems. API testing can greatly help in reducing time and resources during testing.
API testing is considered to be very critical for automation since APIs are the primary interface to an application’s logic. Since APIs lacks UI, API testing is performed at the message layer.
API testing commonly includes testing the request and response of the REST/SOAP web services with JSON/XML message payloads being sent over HTTP, HTTPS, JMS and MQ protocols. API testing is done directly as part of integration testing to determine if they meet expectations for functionality, performance and security.
Functional Testing | Performance Testing | Security Testing |
---|---|---|
API functional testing is used to verify APIs' responses for a wide range of feasible requests, also to ensure acceptable behaviour in case of negative scenarios such as failures and unexpected inputs. |
API performance testing is used to verify whether APIs are able to deliver responses within an acceptable amount of time in case of large/extreme inputs. |
API security testing is to detect security issues and vulnerabilities in APIs. |
Top 5 Tools |
Top 5 Tools |
Top 5 Tools |
Tricentis*
|
WebLOAD*
|
ReadyAPI*
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ReadyAPI*
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ReadyAPI*
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Fiddler
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vREST*
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HP Performance Tester*
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Wireshark
|
Postman
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Apica LoadTest*
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Metasploit Framework
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Jersey-Jackson Framework
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Apache JMeter
|
OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP)
|
*Commercial
API automation framework can be setup using various open source technologies like: Jackson or Gson for JSON parsing, Jersey client for consuming test APIs.
Jersey-Jackson Framework Structure
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