Best Practices for Automating API Tests

APIs have become an essential foundation to encourage modern applications. Mobile apps now utilize standard interfaces to combine with back-end systems and IoT devices communicate to each other as well as third-party applications – all by APIs.

Software product companies now allow APIs via customizable interfaces, often regarded as the API economy. If you require quality and speed, you’re not alone. This is one of the causes that Automated API testing is a requirement and your channel to quickly achieving a high-quality product with an outstanding user experience. 

Faster bug fixes imply faster time to market – it’s not rocket science. But first, you require to test and find those bugs – before your consumers do. 

You can stay focused on satisfying your quality, reliability, and performance measures. How quickly you’ll see the advantages depends on how accurately your Dev and QA team follows the best methods of API testing.

We’ve put together some key practices of automated API testing that will allow you to streamline your testing, save time, and deliver better quality software faster.

Run Dry

The “Don’t Repeat Yourself” or the DRY method reduces any undesired redundancy and is highly suggested in building effective test cases. Let’s say you require to test an endpoint for user data. The relational database (which includes the user data) consists of five entries. In the absence of an “All Users” course, if you require to verify the feedback when each entry is called, you can only access the endpoint data by conducting multiple calls for all database entries.

How do you follow the DRY method here? The non-DRY method would look something like building assigned requests and assertions for each endpoint user. This may sound reasonable. However, if the endpoint has 20 entries, you require to build the same test, times 20. With various assertions, say 10, you’re seeing at 200 individual assertions.

To follow the DRY method here, you should know that the schema for all users and the assertions to verify the schema should be homogeneous.

Simply employ the loop component via tools like Postman and repeat over each endpoint.

Clear Test Cases and Complete Test Reports

As your product approaches its development life cycle, API automation testing places it into a plethora of virtual user network and application interactions. These test cases are the core of the entire testing agenda and you cannot stand to be wrong here. The more logical the tests, the simpler it is for your test engineers to debug the code. You require time and resource allocation when automated test scripts fail to perform.

Document the reasons for test crashes, if any, such as flawed frameworks and functionality, and race conditions. You should examine each SUT element for all possible configurations and highlight the breakdown test clause in the report.

Reduce the Fixed Data Sources

When your product is live, the API endpoints will rely on the product from other APIs. Conduct integration testing that calls the first API and does the use of that call to hit a similar API. This assures you are testing your application on the actual user flows and creating integration tests rather than approving each endpoint in a vacuum. Automated testing of API endpoints is a significant element for a holistic testing approach. Verifying the interaction among API endpoints sets ahead of the unforeseen issues in the release.

Treat the API you’re Testing Like a Consumer Would

If you’re testing an API, you need to manage it specifically as a consumer would. At times, while writing test suites we concentrate too much on what we know to be the proper response. To accurately examine all our API endpoints, we need to introduce the sort of errors that a user might introduce knowingly or unknowingly. In other words, we require to think like a user. After all, things seldom happen in predictable ways in a live environment so it’s really important to test like we’re already there.

Eliminate as Many Fixed Data Sources as Possible

API endpoints usually rely on the output from different APIs, when in a live environment. The only way to assure that this is whole is to perform an integration test that calls the first API and then utilizes the result of that call to hit the second API. When we begin testing the second API with accumulated static expected data from the first API, we are no longer testing the environment holistically. We should understand actual user flows and build integration tests rather than testing individual endpoints in thin air, wherever possible.

Engage with a Trusted Partner to Save Time and Release Faster

Outsourcing doesn’t suggest you on-board an unknown entity and relies simply on your instincts to accomplish quality. The right QA team will give expertise, best practices, and continuity, combining with your in-house team and assuring a smart, Agile strategy. Digital technologies provide you and your QA partner to communicate in real-time and maintain a consistent contact cadence. The communication element values as much outside the automated API test process as it does within. Outsourcing QA offers cost and time savings and the capability to work with a strong and very experienced team of engineers.

TestUnity has offered comprehensive QA services across various industries, varying from financial, health, legal and more. You obtain portable and extendable test automation suites, finished with repeatable automated test scripts that allow an efficient mix of coverage and speed. The sooner you discover the bugs, the earlier your Dev team will understand what’s breaking the deployment and can make the required tweaks.

Connect with TestUnity’s team of API testing engineers who will help you with comprehensive test-driven deployments – contact us today to learn more.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.