API Testing

Available Test Products (Free and Commercial)

The following is a list of various products that were discussed that provide, or can assist, with API testing.

• Web Based/Cloud

  • Runscope
  • Celasta
  • Loader.io
  • Apache Bench (not entirely cloud based)

• Self Installed/Self Hosted

  • SoapUI
  • Postman
  • jMeter
  • LoadUI (integrates with SoapUI)

• Other Tools – Performance/Analytics:

  • Fiddler plugins – Stress Stimulus and Intruder 21
  • API Change Log – Used to be notified if another site/service has changes to their API change log.
  • Pingdom – Used for site monitoring
  • New Relic – performance testing
  • UXM – performance monitoring
  • Data Dog – Performance monitoring
  • Paper Trail and Logly – Log monitoring
  • Splunk – performance monitoring
  • Redbot – Spec performance tester

Additional Notes

• Be careful not to write too many tests, this could cause issues and cause tests to break when adding features.
• Need to test internal and external resources.
• It can be useful to design with mocks so that both sides of the development process (client and server) can build to the mock to expedite the development process. *When stress testing make sure you simulate your production environment, including load balancers, as this will affect your test results.
• In general it is good practice to do unit testing as well as integration testing on an API project. They both have value.