Automated Testing for REST and SOAP API
API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface. It enables communication and data exchange between two separate software systems. A software system implementing an API contains functions/sub-routines which can be executed by another software system. API test automation has the potential of significantly accelerating the testing and development process. API test automation ensures consistency in testing and enables continuous improvement in the software quality. Automation enables API tests to be executed either at pre determined intervals or to be triggered by an event, like code commit. Api Testing is entirely different from GUI Testing and mainly concentrates on the business logic layer of the software architecture. This testing won't concentrate on the look and feel of an application. Instead of using standard user inputs(keyboard) and outputs, in Api Testing, you use software to send calls to the API, get output, and note down the system's response.
What is REST API
- Representational state transfer (REST) or RESTful web services are a way of providing interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. REST-compliant Web services allow requesting systems to access and manipulate textual representations of Web resources using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations. Other forms of Web services exist which expose their own arbitrary sets of operations such as WSDL and SOAP. "Web resources" were first defined on the World Wide Web as documents or files identified by their URLs, but today they have a much more generic and abstract definition encompassing every thing or entity that can be identified, named, addressed or handled, in any way whatsoever, on the Web. In a RESTful Web service, requests made to a resource's URI will elicit a response that may be in XML, HTML, JSON or some other defined format. The response may confirm that some alteration has been made to the stored resource, and it may provide hypertext links to other related resources or collections of resources. Using HTTP, as is most common, the kind of operations available include those predefined by the CRUD HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and so on. By using a stateless protocol and standard operations, REST systems aim for fast performance, reliability, and the ability to grow, by re-using components that can be managed and updated without affecting the system as a whole, even while it is running. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation.Fielding's dissertation explained the REST principles that were known as the "HTTP object model" beginning in 1994, and were used in designing the HTTP 1.1 and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) standards. The term is intended to evoke an image of how a well-designed Web application behaves: it is a network of Web resources (a virtual state-machine) where the user progresses through the application by selecting links, such as /user/tom, and operations such as GET or DELETE (state transitions), resulting in the next resource (representing the next state of the application) being transferred to the user for their use.
SOAP API
- SOAP (originally Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. Its purpose is to induce extensibility, neutrality and independence. It uses XML Information Set for its message format, and relies on application layer protocols, most often Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), for message negotiation and transmission. SOAP allows processes running on disparate operating systems (such as Windows and Linux) to communicate using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Since Web protocols like HTTP are installed and running on all operating systems, SOAP allows clients to invoke web services and receive responses independent of language and platforms.
SOAP Vs REST
Tools for API testing
- SOAPUI
- Runscope
- Postman with jetpacks
- Postman with Newman
- Curl
- Cfix
- Check
- CTESK
- dotTEST
- Eclipse SDK tool- Automated API testing
Difference Between SOAP and REST
