Apickli is a REST API integration testing framework based on cucumber.js.
It provides a gherkin framework and a collection of utility functions to make API testing easy and less time consuming.
Apickli is also available as an NPM package.
Cucumber.js is JavaScript & Node.js implementation of Behaviour Driven Development test framework - Cucumber. Cucumber.js is using Gherkin language for describing the test scenarios in BDD manner.
Apickli depends on cucumber.js being installed on your system. You can do this by installing cucumber.js globally:
$ npm install -g cucumber
You can copy existing example-project directory in this code repository which has skeleton test project created with tests against httpbin.org
Below steps will help you start a new test project from scratch.
Let's start a new integration testing project for an API called myapi. The folder structure will need to match the structure expected by cucumber.js:
test/
---- features/
--------- myapi.feature
--------- step_definitions/
-------------- myapi.js
---- package.json
Features directory contains cucumber feature files written in gherkin syntax. step_definitions contains the JavaScript implementation of gherkin test cases. Check out the GitHub repository for example implementations covering most used testing scenarios.
This can be an example package.json file for our project:
{
"name": "myapi-test",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "Integration testing for myapi v1",
"dependencies": {
"apickli": "latest"
}
}
Now we can get the project dependencies installed:
$ npm install
We can now start defining our scenarios for the test. For this tutorial, we will be borrowing sections from the example project in apickli source code.
Let's start with the scenario file called myapi.feature. Full scenario definition with various other functions can be found here: example-project/features/httpbin.feature
Feature:
Httpbin.org exposes various resources for HTTP request testing
As Httpbin client I want to verify that all API resources are working as they should
Scenario: Setting headers in GET request
Given I set User-Agent header to apickli
When I GET /get
Then response body path $.headers.User-Agent should be apickli
We now need the corresponding step definitions that implement the steps in our scenario. Apickli has a collection of steps already implemented - ready to be included in your project: source/apickli/apickli-gherkin.js. It is included in the NPM package so you can symlink to it from under your local node_modules/apickli folder - see example-project/features/step_definitions/apickli-gherkin.js for symlink.
Refer to Gherkin Expressions section below to see a list of steps implemented by apickli-gherkin.
Now we need a step definition file specific for this project, let's call it myapi.js:
/* jslint node: true */
'use strict';
var apickli = require('apickli');
module.exports = function() {
// cleanup before every scenario
this.Before(function(scenario, callback) {
this.apickli = new apickli.Apickli('http', 'httpbin.org');
callback();
});
};
The following will run our scenario (in the project directory):
$ cucumber-js features/httpbin.feature
....
1 scenario (1 passed)
3 steps (3 passed)
Cucumber.js default step timeout is 5000ms. Follow this guide to change it for your steps.
You can also use Grunt task runner to run the tests.
'use strict';
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.initConfig({
cucumberjs: {
src: 'features',
options: {
format: 'pretty',
steps: 'features/step_definitions'
}
}
});
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-cucumber');
grunt.registerTask('tests', ['cucumberjs']);
}
...
"dependencies": {
"apickli": "latest",
"grunt": "latest",
"grunt-cucumber": "latest"
}
...
npm install
$ grunt tests
Running "cucumberjs:src" (cucumberjs) task
Feature:
Httpbin.org exposes various resources for HTTP request testing
As Httpbin client I want to verify that all API resources are working as they should
Scenario: Setting headers in GET request # features/httpbin.feature:5
Given I set User-Agent header to apickli # features/httpbin.feature:6
When I GET /get # features/httpbin.feature:7
Then response body path $.headers.User-Agent should be apickli # features/httpbin.feature:8
1 scenario (1 passed)
3 steps (3 passed)
Done, without errors.
You can also use Gulp to run the tests.
var gulp = require('gulp');
var cucumber = require('gulp-cucumber');
gulp.task('test', function() {
return gulp.src('features/*')
.pipe(cucumber({
'steps': 'features/step_definitions/*.js',
'format': 'pretty'
}));
});
...
"gulp": "latest",
"gulp-cucumber": "latest"
...
$ npm install
$ npm install -g gulp
See https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp/blob/master/docs/getting-started.md.
$ gulp test
The following gherkin expressions are implemented in apickli source code source/apickli/apickli-gherkin.js:
GIVEN:
I set (.*) header to (.*)
I set body to (.*)
I pipe contents of file (.*) to body
I have basic authentication credentials (.*) and (.*)
I set bearer token
WHEN:
I GET $resource
I POST to $resource
I PUT $resource
I DELETE $resource
THEN:
response header (.*) should exist
response header (.*) should not exist
response body should be valid (xml|json)
response code should be (\d+)
response code should not be (\d+)
response header (.*) should be (.*)
response header (.*) should not be (.*)
response body should contain (.*)
response body should not contain (.*)
response body path (.*) should be (.*)
response body path (.*) should not be (.*)
I store the value of body path (.*) as access token
I store the value of response header (.*) as (.*) in scenario scope
I store the value of body path (.*) as (.*) in scenario scope
value of scenario variable (.*) should be (.*)
I store the value of response header (.*) as (.*) in global scope
I store the value of body path (.*) as (.*) in global scope
The simplest way to adopt these expressions is to create a symlink from node_modules/apickli/apickli-gherkin.js to features/step_definitions/apickli-gherkin.js
$ ln -s node_modules/apickli/apickli-gherkin.js features/step_definitions/apickli-gherkin.js
If using Windows, follow this guide to create a symlink: How-To Geek Guide.
If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to raise an issue or fork the project and issue a pull request with suggested improvements.