API Tester

The main goal of this tool is to test the basic correctness of the API. It will run as a late step in a Continuous Integration process, consuming the REST API after it has already been deployed.

A series of black box tests will be run focusing on:

• the HTTP response code
• other HTTP headers in the response
• the payload (JSON)

Each test will only be focused on a single responsibility. Another important aspect of the integration tests is adherence to the Single Level of Abstraction Principle – the logic within a test should be written at a high level.

Running the tests

The Api Tester consists of a series of black box tests that are run using Gradle. You don't need to have Gradle installed as the project ships with it's own gradle wrapper.

Authentication

The USI API relies on the AAP Service to secure it. The AAP service (Authentication, Authorisation and Profile) provides a central repository for identities (Authentication), group management/permissions via domains (Authorisation) and attributes (Profile).

Properties

To run the API tests the AAP authentication credentials are required. These may be provided either as properties in a properties file or as command line parameters. The properties file takes precedence over the command line parameters.

All the other properties will default to point at the current USI development deployment unless overridden by defining an application.properties file in the project parent directory. You can find an example properties file here.

It's possible to provide the AAP credentials through the command line and the remaining properties in the properties file or all in the properties file. The AAP authentication credentials are the only required properties, without which the tests will NOT be able to run.

Required properties:

aapUsername=username
aapPassword=password

Optional properties and their default values:

submitterEmail[email protected]
teamName=team-alpha

apiRoot=http://submission-dev.ebi.ac.uk/api/
authenticationUrl=https://explore.api.aap.tsi.ebi.ac.uk/auth

Run the tests

As explained above, there are two ways of running the tests depending on the way you pass the AAP credentials.

1. Passing the credentials in the application.properties file:

    $ cd api-tester/
    $ ./gradlew test

2. Passing the credentials in the command line:

    $ cd api-tester/
    $ ./gradlew test -DaapUsername=username -DaaPassword=password

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Eugen Paraschiv for the article on how to Test a REST API with Java.

For details about how to use HttpClient Basic Authentication check this article from the same author.