Almost any modern application has a back-end system, and testing this is essential. Examples of back-end systems are HTTP services, databases, messaging transports, RPC and services, and more. Most of those systems can be validated, tested, or somehow checked, which is the baseline for testing. Of course, I am talking about any form of testing, from functional, non-functional to fitness functions (more on that in another post).
As I discussed previously, the software runs the modern world, and it is the quality that sustains that innovation and stability. In the next section, I will briefly touch on HTTP services' functional and non-functional testing.
HTTP functional testing
It is a type of testing where we test the behavior and the correctness of a specific HTTP service or system. Request/response objects are the foundation of this kind of testing. We want to simulate a client (maybe web or mobile application) connecting to our HTTP back-end service, making requests, and receiving the response.
We define requests with URI paths, HTTP methods, authentication parameters, versioning headers, query parameters, and payload. To set up a request, we need to know how to construct it. Some of the questions we can ask ourselves before we start writing the tests:
- Do we have API documentation (Swagger,...)?
- What kind of data do we want to send?
- Can we fake the data?
- What is the authentication method used?
- How can we validate or invalidate an HTTP request payload?
Once we write or define a test, we can execute it. We perform the request and wait for the response. To validate the response, we can ask those questions:
- What are we expecting in the response?
- What is the type of response?
- Did we receive the expected HTTP response code?
- What's in the content type of the response?
- Do we parse the response and look for a specific parameter?
- How long did it take to receive the response?
As the owners of the HTTP service, we need to provide a comprehensive suite of tests to cover as many angles as possible in a reasonable amount of time. Find an optimal test coverage.
HTTP non-functional testing
Here we are not testing the functional or behavioral aspect, but we want to test how our HTTP service operates under certain conditions. For example, to check our infrastructure's limits by sending massive amounts of requests. We might be interested in finding out our current infrastructure's optimum requests per second (RPS). Or we might perform security or compliance tests.
In any case, we should cover both functional and non-functional aspects by tests.
Bottom line
At Beekn, we are well aware that this is not the end. We can do so much more by testing our infrastructure, databases, and other back-end parts of our system to make this post too big. The bottom line is that Beekn is a tool that provides an easier way for not-so-technical people to do the back-end tests. Beekn is a zero-install and zero-code solution.
Soon, we will open up beta spots and allow you to spin the Beekn and try it yourself.