What is API testing and how important is it? Let's follow the article below to find out the specific answer.
What is API testing?
API (Application Programming Interface) is known as a set of intermediate connection methods, helping 02 software to communicate as well as exchange data with each other through HTTP requests and response.
It serves as the main interface for application logic, increasingly used by the developer community in the process of building software for human life.
Theoretically, API testing can be understood as a type of software testing, which plays an extremely important role in automation testing.
Specifically, it involves testing the APIs directly.
At the same time, this is also part of the integration testing job to determine if the software can meet the requirements for features, reliability, performance, security... as expected by the developer or not.
This process is different from other types of testing because the API does not have a graphical user interface (GUI), so it is necessary to set up an initialization and execution environment at the business layer.
Why API testing is needed?
- Allows developers to get involved in the product lifecycle early so that they can test the application without being dependent on the GUI, saving time and effort in fixing bugs.
- Help to achieve automation testing strategy with effective is amazing.
- Help to minimize software testing costs to a minimum.
- It is possible to develop software according to Agile methodology, eliminating manual regression testing.
Some methods related to API testing
- Functionality testing: Verify the API works properly with the functionality it was created for.
- Usability testing: Verify API works smoothly.
- Reliability testing: Verify the API call and returning the results can work stably, consistently.
- Load testing: Verify the API works properly with a certain amount of calls.
- Security testing: Verify the API is defined but has security requirements such as authentication, permissions, access controls...
- API documentation testing - discovery testing: Confirm the API's documentation is easy to use for the user.
