Soaspec

This gem helps to represent multiple API tests against a backend briefly, concisely and clearly. It is essentially a wrapper around the Savon and RestClient gems, adding useful functionality including

  • Creating multiple API calls from the same base configuration through the use of an ExchangeHandler class
  • Extracting values from response body's through either XPath or JSONPath
  • Building up a custom RSpec success scenario shared example to reuse common tests on an API
  • Methods simplifying setting and extracting values from a Request/Response pair (Exchange)
  • Waiting for a particular response from an API by polling it
  • Representing paths to values from a response with business-meaningful method names
  • Generating initial code for testing an API with soaspec new
  • Accessing and utilising oauth2 access tokens
  • Hosting a virtual_server that simulates REST & SOAP responses from an API

Build Status Coverage

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'soaspec'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install soaspec

Things to be done

Getting Started

To create a new test suite using this you can use the soaspec binary.

Example:

mkdir 'api_test'
cd 'api_test'
soaspec new [rest/soap]
bundle install

Then you can run the tests with:

rake spec

You can also use soaspec generate to generate a set of tests from a WSDL. This is still in trial period and will be finished probably after Savon 3 is more stable.

Usage

  • SOAP - this uses Savon behind the scenes. Some defaults are overridden. Please see 'soap_handler.rb'-'default_options' method for such defaults. When describing an API override this in 'savon_options' method
  • REST - this uses the resource class from the Rest-Client gem behind the scenes.

See spec and features for example of usage.

ExchangeHandler

To start with, create a class inheriting from a ‘Handler’ class for each web service that needs testing. In this class you define the common parameters used for testing it.

For example:

# Classes are set up through inheriting from either `Soaspec::RestHandler` or `Soaspec::SoapHandler`
class PuppyService < Soaspec::RestHandler

  headers accept: 'application/json', content_type: 'application/json' # Set default headers for all `Exchanges` using this class

  base_url 'http://petstore.swagger.io/v2/pet' # URL for which all requests using this class will start with

  element :id, :id # Define a method 'id' that can be obtained with either XPATH '//id' or JSONPath '$..id'
  element :category_id, '$..category.id' # Define method to obtain a category id through JSON Path
end

You can easily create a exchange handler with the soaspec add command. This will also add comments explaining common methods that can be used

Exchange

After creating the ExchangeHandler, you reference this class in creating Exchanges (objects that each represent a request / response pair). Upon initialization of the Exchange object (or later on through setters), parameters specific to this request are set. Most getters of the Exchange are on the response & will implicitly trigger the API request to be made. Once this request has been made, all following accessors of the response will just use the response of the previous request made.

For example, to create a http post using the above ExchangeHandler and extract a value from the response body using JSON PATH.

exchange = PuppyService.post(body: { status: 'sold' }) # The 'body' key will convert it's value from a Hash to JSON
# Create a new Exchange that will post to 'http://petstore.swagger.io/v2/pet' with JSON { "status": "sold" }
exchange.category_id
# This will trigger the request to be made & return a value at JSON path $..category.id, throwing an exception if not found

See Request Body Parameters for more details on setting a request body. See Creating an Exchange for details on how to create an Exchange.

RSpec

For example:

context PuppyService.new('Order Puppies') do
  describe post(:create_pet, body: { status: 'sold' }) do # Post with status as sold in request
    its(['status']) { is_expected.to eq 'sold' } # Check responses status is sold
  end
end

Tips

If you find having a large backtrace on errors or RSpec shared examples such as 'success scenarios' this can shorten the backtrace.

RSpec.configure do |config|

config.backtrace_exclusion_patterns = [ /rspec/ ] end

Cucumber

If you're using Cucumber then I would recommend the following

In the Given (or background) specify the Exchange object. Either store this as an instance variable (e.g @exchange) or use the global Soaspec.last_exchange (which is automatically set).

In the When, use the call method to make the request @exchange.call. If problems occur in making the request this should separate such failures from issues with the response.

In the Then, make the assertions from the @exchange object. E.g

expect(@exchange['message']).to include 'success'
expect(@exchange.status_code).to eq 200

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitLab at https://gitlab.com/samuel-garratt/soaspec. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Soaspec project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.