Over a decade, Web services or APIs have been deployed widely to propel the interaction between application and server for data or information exchange. Agile practices have revolutionized the way software is developed and has also increased the frequency of the software release. This proliferated the demand for automation testing, which automates regression tests to achieve faster time to market. How does API testing fit into this?
Automation testing is GUI based, so whenever there is a change in an application it implies change in code, GUI has to be ready to perform automation testing which is actually slowing down agile practices. For a two or three weeks’ sprint, this approach cannot deliver better results in terms of quality and time to market. APIs will be ready before the GUI, so testing APIs will empower to achieve quicker feedback before a release.
What Bugs Can API Testing Highlight
An API testing is another type of software testing which can prove worthy in detecting the bugs around the web.
The first focusing area of API testing is functionality. The verification of basic functionality like creating and deleting data is the first step in testing functionality. API testing also showcases the missing features in the functionality. After achieving a proper functionality, API testing focuses on determining the accurate working of arguments and actions.
The second focusing area of API testing is reliability. Testing the reliability helps to identify connectivity issues. Consistent working of API across different systems is a must. Detecting the bugs which pertain to unification could improve reliability.
The third focusing area of API testing is performance. Identification of performance bugs is done by stress testing which is a crucial part of API testing process. This testing aims to detect how well a system can run when overloaded with huge traffic and it also highlights the areas of improvement in API. Keeping a check on performance can avoid rising of the problem of improper working of multi-threading.
The fourth focusing area of API testing is security. API testing identifies the unprotected data which is easy for hackers to intercept. It finds out that the data which is being forwarded on browsers is well encrypted or not.
What all could API serve to the user?
Web applications mostly follow the three-layered structure. The prime layer is data layer, the middle layer is logic layer and the third layer is presentation layer. The logic layer is supervised by API to achieve all the business logics of web application. This layer undergoes the API testing which is the significant part of software development cycle. The benefits that API testing offers to the user are:
- Builds up customer’s trust to such an extent that it ensures business stability.
- As compared to GUI, API test is more reliable and quicker.
- It does not have anything to do with UI, so testing can be done at the earliest for the agile development.
- API can raise the revenue for the business as it can serve the purpose of a product itself.
- API can prove fruitful in acquiring content and solidifying partnership by empowering and enhancing the product such as Twitter and Facebook.
The Demand of API Testing for Agile Practices:
As said earlier software development methodologies that incorporated agile practices are clinging most businesses and this adoption is altering the ways of developing software and software testing. The conventionally accepted GUI automated tests take long time to run against a user interface.
In the agile world, testing becomes mandatory to occur at a lower level which is API, to deliver quality software release at a faster pace. API testing emphasizes on testing the core layer of any application, which is business logic layer, and ensures the core functionality to be defect free. So, in the time-period of agile, API testing holds more weightage than GUI testing. Moreover, developers can themselves execute the API testing. Even prior to the completion of development, API tests can be created due to the API contracts.
Wrapping it up, customers’ needs and their expectations have become more dynamic than ever before, so catering the customers with what they require demands agility in business rules. APIs act as gateway to an application’s business logic layer and API testing brings assurance to business logic layer that incorporates dynamic business rules. API testing can bestow organizations with tremendous benefits attached to agile practices by offering reduced business cost and increased time to market.
