API Testing Product
API Testing can solve specific problems that trouble the world of test-automation. It is widely discussed that teams struggle with the following:
Flaky tests
Keeping up with the pace of development “in-sprint”
Maintainability
Functional Regression Coverage
Performance Testing
Because of their nature, API test-automation suites are well suited to combat these challenges.
Why is API testing more relevant today?
HTTP APIs, especially REST and GraphQL, are acknowledged to be the most effective architectural pattern to expose and re-use core business-functionality for variety of reasons.
The simplicity, ubiquity and accessibility of HTTP means that it is supported by all platforms, all major languages or development platforms (such as Java, .NET, Python, JavaScript etc) or frameworks such as Spring Boot, Node Express, Python Django or Flask, Ruby on Rails and so on. The ability to stand up a REST server or call an HTTP service is considered a basic skill. Every device from computing nodes in the cloud to mobiles and IoT devices have the basic capability to make an HTTP client call.
HTTP has a clear advantage that it is the easiest way to establish connectivity between two computing-devices that may be separated by geography, operating system, and hardware. HTTP is given the “right of way” in typical firewall rules and allowing HTTP traffic while still enforcing security is something all organizations do with ease.
The product-development community has converged on the fact that APIs are the best way to re-use core-business functionality across a variety of consuming device profiles. For example, web-browsers, mobile-devices, or servers performing inter-service communication (similar to remote-procedure calls) – are typical API invocation paths within an enterprise.
Why Karate for API Testing?
Karate is the only open-source tool to combine API test-automation, mocks, performance-testing and even UI automation into a single, unified framework. The syntax is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Assertions and HTML reports are built-in, and you can run tests in parallel for speed.
There’s also a cross-platform stand-alone executable for teams not comfortable with Java. You don’t have to compile code. Just write tests in a simple, readable syntax - carefully designed for HTTP, JSON, GraphQL and XML. And you can mix API and UI test-automation within the same test script.
A Java API also exists for those who prefer to programmatically integrate Karate’s rich automation and data-assertion capabilities.
Why Karate?
Open-Source Unified Test Automation Plattform
Top Differentiators
API Assertions
Low-Code Schema Matching
End-user workflows
Designed to chain API calls & user actions
Data Driven Testing
Loop with ease and even use CSV files
Parallel Execution
10 times faster than single-threaded
Java Interop
Test DB calls, async,gRPC,Kafka etc.
Re-use as Perf. Tests
Save time instead of re-writing tests in a 2nd tool
Easy for non-programers
Product owner can contribute to tests.
Key Features
- Java knowledge is not required and even non-programmers can write tests
- Scripts are plain-text, require no compilation step or IDE, and teams can collaborate using Git / standard SCM
- Based on the popular Cucumber / Gherkin standard - with IDE support and syntax-coloring options
- Elegant DSL syntax 'natively' supports JSON and XML - including JsonPath and XPath expressions
- Eliminate the need for 'Java Beans' or 'helper code' to represent payloads and HTTP end-points, and dramatically reduce the lines of code needed for a test
- Ideal for testing the highly dynamic responses from GraphQL API-s because of Karate's built-in text-manipulation and JsonPath capabilities
- Tests are super-readable - as scenario data can be expressed in-line, in human-friendly JSON, XML, Cucumber Scenario Outline tables, or a payload builder approach unique to Karate
- Express expected results as readable, well-formed JSON or XML, and assert in a single step that the entire response payload (no matter how complex or deeply nested) - is as expected
- Comprehensive assertion capabilities - and failures clearly report which data element (and path) is not as expected, for easy troubleshooting of even large payloads
- Fully featured debugger that can step backwards and even re-play a step while editing it - a huge time-saver
- Simpler and more powerful alternative to JSON-schema for validating payload structure and format - that even supports cross-field / domain validation logic
- Scripts can call other scripts - which means that you can easily re-use and maintain authentication and 'set up' flows efficiently, across multiple tests
- Re-use of payload-data and user-defined functions across tests is so easy - that it becomes a natural habit for the test-developer
- Built-in support for switching configuration across different environments (e.g. dev, QA, pre-prod)
- Support for data-driven tests and being able to tag or group tests is built-in, no need to rely on an external framework
- Native support for reading YAML and even CSV files - and you can use them for data-driven tests
- Standard Java / Maven project structure, and seamless integration into CI / CD pipelines - and support for JUnit 5
- Option to use as a light-weight stand-alone executable - convenient for teams not comfortable with Java
- Multi-threaded parallel execution, which is a huge time-saver, especially for integration and end-to-end tests
- Built-in test-reports compatible with Cucumber so that you have the option of using third-party (open-source) maven-plugins for even better-looking reports
- Reports include HTTP request and response logs in-line, which makes troubleshooting and debugging easier
- Easily invoke JDK classes, Java libraries, or re-use custom Java code if needed, for ultimate extensibility
- Simple plug-in system for authentication and HTTP header management that will handle any complex, real-world scenario
- Option to invoke via a Java API, which means that you can easily mix Karate into Java projects or legacy UI-automation suites
- Save significant effort by re-using Karate test-suites as Gatling performance tests that deeply assert that server responses are accurate under load
- Gatling integration can hook into any custom Java code - which means that you can perf-test even non-HTTP protocols such as gRPC
- Async support that allows you to seamlessly integrate the handling of custom events or listening to message-queues
- Built-in HTML templating so that you can extend your test-reports into readable specifications
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Comprehensive support for different flavors of HTTP calls:
- SOAP / XML requests
- HTTPS / SSL - without needing certificates, key-stores or trust-stores
- HTTP proxy server support
- URL-encoded HTML-form data
- Multi-part file-upload - including multipart/mixed and multipart/related
- Browser-like cookie handling
- Full control over HTTP headers, path and query parameters
- Re-try until condition
- Websocket support
Real World Examples of Karate for API Testing https://github.com/karatelabs/karate#real-world-example
