@appveen/rat v1.6.4

ReST API Tester - R.A.T

Writing test cases and automating them are fairly time consuming activities. RAT aims to eliminate the pain of automating REST API test cases.

In itself, RAT is not a new framework. It's a simple code generator that generates mocha test cases from a simple JSON file. RAT uses request for API calls and chai-expect as the assertion library

Current version of RAT ONLY supports JSON request and response vaidations.

Table of contents

1. Installation
2. CLI Options
3. Setting up
   • Folder structure
4. Writing test cases
   • Test Suit
   • Test Case
   • Request object
   • Response object
5. Smart substituitions
   • Globals
   • Data-pipes

Installation

npm i -g @appveen/rat

CLI Options

rat [options] [file ...]

The available options are,

• -i, --init: Initialize the currect folder as a RAT test case location.
• --ui: Start RAT in interactive mode on the CLI. This is the default behavior.
• -u,--upgrade: Upgrades the RAT setup in the current folder.
• -g, --generate [file ...]: Generates mocha scripts for all the files under the tests folder or for the files specified.
• -r, --run [file ...]: Run all the tests under the generatedTests folder or the tests specified.
• --stopOnError: Stop at the first failure while running tests
• --har [file]: Generates RAT test case from a HAR file.
• --clean: Displays the instructions to clean RAT setup from a folder.
• --demo: Starts the demo server. This is primarily used for demoing RAT.
• -v, --version: Displays the version of RAT

Setting up

To set up a folder for running RAT tests, run the following commands from the command line.

rat -i

When rat is initialized for the first time, a set of sample test cases are provided under the tests folder.

Folder structure

Once initialised the following folders are created.

Writing test cases

Test cases are bundles as a test suite and each test suite is written as a JSON file.

Test Suit

• Each file is treated as a test suite or a collection of tests.

Sample test casefile,

{
    "testName": "Sample API Tests",
    "url": [ "http://localhost:8080" ],
    "modules": [ "sampleFunction" ],
    "globals": [ "loginResponse", "data" ],
    "tests": []
}

Test Case

Sample test case

{
    "endpoint": "1",
    "name": "Login - Valid",
    "delimiters": ["{{", "}}"],
    "continueOnError": false,
    "wait": 2,
    "request": {},
    "response": {}
}

Request object

N.B.

If the JSON payload is big, then it is a good practice to save the file under lib and reference the file in the test.

If both payload and payloadFile is provided, then payload takes precedence.

e.g.

{
  "method": "GET",
  "url": "/api/a/sm/service",
  "qs": {
    "select": "name domain port",
    "filter": {
      "app": "jerry",
      "name": {
          "$in": ["Test-Relation-Root","Test-Relation-Child" ]
          }
    }
  },
  "headers": {
    "Authorization": "JWT <% loginResponse.token %>"
  },
  "responseCode": 200,
  "saveResponse": "fetchAllEntity"
}

Response object

An optional response object can be defined for a testcase. This response object is used to validate the response from the API. If no response object is provided, then no response validation is done.

e.g.

{
  "body": {
      "message": "Login error!"
  }
}

Smart substituitions

Smart substituitions allows you to specify dynamic payload.

Globals

The value from a global variable can be used in the test case by enclosing it with in the delimiters.

"headers": {"token": "<% loginResponse.token %>"}

The delimiters for the above example are <% and %>.

Data-pipes

This allows you to use the output data of a previously run test case in the current test case.

"url": "/data/{{dataPipe['sampleTest01.json'].data._id}}",