How To Automate Code for APIs

APIs are indispensable to digital business ecosystems, as they allow seamless integration of programs and databases with different industry applications, enabling process automation. Research indicates that 98% of businesses currently use public or private APIs and employ more than 900 applications.

To actively meet market demands, developers should be able to test these web APIs quickly and efficiently. This speeds up the development life cycle and ensures good functionality and innovation.

API tests can be written in various programming languages, such as JSON, XML, and Javascript. These languages are more structured and help with easier verification. 

What Is REST API Testing?

This open-source testing technique for web automation tests RESTful APIs for web applications. These APIs can be tested by sending HTTP/S requests to determine whether the REST API works well. These APIs can be rested with different methods such as POST, PUT, GET, and DELETE. 

Benefits of Automating API Testing

Generally, software testing ensures that a piece of software meets quality standards. API automation testing ensures that the APIs function well, whether you are building them for a single application or using them for several services. Automated API testing helps you ascertain that the different endpoints in your API are functioning and enables you to catch bugs.

Moreover, you will be able to add new features by running test cases to detect that everything is intact. Here are some other benefits of automating the code for APIs:

• API testing is generally black-box testing, so the functionality is tested without looking into the internal structure. All you do is provide input and validate the responses. A plethora of datasets can be used in the same test scenario, and they are instrumental in enhancing API test coverage. This is referred to as API automation testing using a data-driven approach. 

• API testing involves the exchange of data in different formats, such as XML and JSON, so it is language-agnostic. This implies that any programming language can be employed for testing APIs. As most languages have libraries to correlate data in these formats, API responses can be validated easily.

• Does the platform support all types of HTTP requests?

• Can my team learn the software quickly?

• Can the tool integrate with the CI systems my team uses?

DreamFactory

DreamFactory is a robust integration platform that can help you chain multiple APIs to build comprehensive test suites. It helps your organization save time and improve the workflow by automating API testing.

Postman

Rest Assured helps you test REST APIs by employing java libraries. It has valuable matching techniques that enable you to verify the expected results. This platform integrates well with Maven, a build automation solution mainly used for javascripts.  Rest Assured has different methods to fetch data from the request, even with complex JSON structures.

API testing is crucial for the success of your enterprise. The DevOps and QA use it extensively for testing practices. Automated API testing is used widely in the software development process. Automating the API code makes it easy to conduct integration and regression testing whenever changes are made to the application. Moreover, it decreases not only the execution time for the software development cycle but also feedback and redeployments. So, automated API testing improves the overall quality of the application.

Step 1: Start a new API or import an existing API definition. You need to click on the API sidebar and go to the Import option. This option comprises all details regarding the API, such as its name and the method type. You can import the API definitions from a local directory or a file, a URL, a code repository, raw text, or an API gateway.