Two broad types of Web API services are available: SOAP and REST.
- SOAP is a protocol that allows you to send and receive web service requests and answers.
- REST is a web standards-based architecture that uses HTTP. There is no standard for RESTful Web Services, unlike SOAP-based Web services.
Learn about API requirements. These questions will help you understand the API’s requirements before testing them. What is the purpose of the API? This will give you a solid foundation to prepare your input and output data. This step will also help you to define your verification approach. QA, you can verify responses against the database for certain APIs; however, it is best to verify responses against other APIs.
What Is The Workflow For The Application?
APIs are generally used to manipulate an application’s resources. They can be used for reading (GET), creating POST, updating (PU), and deleting (Delete). The purpose of an API will help you prepare your API testing data to be input and output. This step will also help you to define your verification approach. You can verify responses against the database for certain APIs; however, it is best to verify responses against other APIs. The output of the API “Create user”, for example, will be used as input to the API “Get user” for verification. You can use the output of “Get user” to input the “Update user API”, and so forth.
Although it can be difficult to understand the API tester functions, it is not impossible. You can learn enough information to be able to move forward with your testing by doing some digging and probing. These are some ways that you can test HTTP-based APIs without having any documentation. It is likely that an API is still being developed and used by someone in your team. This means that you will have many opportunities to see the API tester in action and learn the information necessary to start your journey towards discovery. It is the best way to get a feel for how an API tester works than to see it in action and put it through its paces.
APIS Globally Status Codes
In API testing, the most important output to check is the response status code. New API testers are familiar with checking if the response code is equal to 200 to determine whether or not an API test is passed. This is an accurate verification. It does not cover all possible test scenarios for the API. In a global standard, all API Tester response status codes can be divided into five categories (or classes). The first digit of each status code determines the class of response. The two last digits of the status code do not have any categorization or class role. Five values are available for the first digit.
- 1xx: (Informational): Your request has been received and is being processed.
- 2xx: Successfully received, understood, and accepted
- 3xx (Redirection). Additional action is required to complete the request.
- 4xx (Client Error): The client requested the wrong syntax, or could not be fulfilled
- 5xx (Server Error): the server did not fulfill an apparently valid request.
The API’s development team will specify the API’s actual response status code. As a tester, it is important to confirm that:
- The code is based on global standard classes
- The requirement specifies the code.
Functional API Focuses
There are some APIs that can be used in a testing project with just one or two inputs. These APIs include login API, get token API, and health check API. These APIs are essential and can be used to access other APIs. These APIs are the most important and will be the first to work. It is best to not test more than one API per test case. It can be painful to discover errors because you have to debug each API’s data flow in a specific order. Try to keep your testing as simple and straightforward as possible. In some cases, you may need to call multiple APIs to perform an end-to-end testing process. These tasks should be completed after each API has been tested.