vREST NG - Taking your API Testing experience to the next level

Hi guys, today I will discuss about how easy it is to perform API Testing using vREST NG irrespective of whether you are a developer, non developer or tester. vREST NG provides simple interface so that any body can write API test cases quickly without writing a single line of code.

Before starting, I am assuming that you have already installed vREST NG and created a project in it.

Note: You may easily follow this tutorial with in few minutes with vREST NG Pro version. But If you are using the Community Edition, then only the Diff report related section will not be there in the Community Edition. Rest of the tutorial will work fine. This tutorial is little old and we have moved several pro features in the community edition as well in the recent release.

Now, I will guide you with step by step instructions on how you may write an API test case in vREST NG. For that, let's take a sample API which creates a record on the server. The details of the API are as follows:

API Endpoint:

POST  https://example.vrest.io/contacts/v2/test/contacts

Request Body:

{
    "name":"Dheeraj Aggarwal",
    "email":"[email protected]",
    "designation":"Engineering Manager",
    "organization":"Optimizory Technologies",
    "country":"India",
    "aboutMe":"Passionate to make vREST NG - World's #1 API Testing Tool",
    "twitterId":"dheerajaggarwal",
    "facebookId":"dheeraj.aggarwal",
    "githubId":"dheerajaggarwal"
}

So, these are the API details. With these details in hand, let's quickly try to create a test case in vREST NG.

In vREST NG, just click on plus icon as shown in the following screenshot to create your API Test Case.

A dialog window will appear to create the test case. Just provide the Test Suite Name, Request Method, API Endpoint and meaningful summary for your test case like this.

Now click on Confirm button to create the test case. The created test case will look like this:

Now, let's provide the request body for this test case. Just click on the Request Tab in the application for the test case and then select Body sub-tab and provide the request body like this:

Now, let's try to validate our sample API Test Case. To write assertions, simply click on the Validation tab. When you create a test case, the application automatically creates a Status Code assertion for you which checks whether the status code is equal to 200 or not.

Let's execute this test case by clicking on button "Run Single" available in the middle pane. Or you may click on button "Run All" available in the left pane which will execute all the test cases available in the left pane.

When you run the test case, you can see the results in the rightmost pane.

So far, we have validated only the status code of our API response. Now, let's try to validate the response content as well. To validate the response content, simply click on the "Generate Expected Body" button available in the right most pane as shown in the above image.

This operation will automatically adds a Text Body assertion that will compare the expected response body with actual response body received.

It also automatically sets the expected response body in the Expected Body sub-tab in middle pane.

Now, let's try to execute the test again. This time the test has failed. You will be able to quickly analyse the failure by looking at the diff report as shown in the below image.

Our test case failed because there are some dynamic values in the response which always changes when you create a record on the server using our sample API.

To handle this issue, you may ignore these values by using our wildcard or star variable in the expected body like this:

Now if you run the test case, you can see that the test case is now passing by looking at the Results tab.

Now suppose, we only want to validate the name, email and _id property of the API response, then you may use this `{{*}}` variable in the key part as well like the image below:

As you can see that the test case is still working. Now, let's try to modify our expected body to make this test case fail, so that we can understand how we fix our test case if our API response changes over time.

As you can see in the above image, that if we change the name property in the expected body to make the test case fail then vREST NG provides you the beautiful diff report to analyse the failure reason. Now if you think that the latest response is right, then you may just click on button "Copy Actual to Expected" to fix this test case. vREST NG will automatically change only those properties which are failing. Isn't it cool???

These special variables, you may apply in your complex API responses as well. You can also validate your API response structure by specifying the JSON schema in the Expected Schema tab. vREST NG provides very powerful response validation capabilities. In 99% of the cases you will not need to write a single line of code to validate your API response. With vREST NG, you may write your complex test scenarios with in few minutes.

Finally, I would like to say, that it is very easy to write test cases in vREST NG. Anybody who is having a basic understanding of HTTP protocol and who is having the API specification can easily write test cases in vREST NG irrespective of his/her programming skills. In the above post, we have not written a single line of code.

You may even generate the tests through swagger file in vREST NG and feed test data via excel sheets. For more information, please read my another post on Swagger + Excel Sheets, a wonderful way of validating REST APIs.

If you are facing any issues related to API Automated testing in your organisation, then do contact us. We will arrange the live meeting to discuss your needs and will also provide you the demo of our product vREST NG showcasing its capabilities.

If you find this post helpful, do like or share with your colleagues and friends. And try out vREST NG and let us know your feedbacks.