6 API Testing Challenges and Ways to Overcome Them
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Loading... - Ella Murph
- 12 Jul 2022
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API (Application Programming Interface) has taken over modern software development. There are 19.1 Million API developers worldwide, and 90% of them utilize APIs. 30% of the development time is for API development, and the value of the API management market will be $5.3 billion by 2023. APIs are the present and future of software development. Therefore, testing them is essential.
It’s a software development practice where you test the API to check functionality, reliability, performance, security, and interoperability. It gets performed at a business layer, where the app logic resides. Therefore, incorporating API testing can ensure a fully-functional app, reduce time and cost, guarantee faster release, improve test case coverage and stability, etc.
As with every technology, technique, or methodology, API testing comes with many challenges that one has to overcome to reap rich rewards. This blog will provide you with a list of some of the most common API testing challenges and how to overcome them.
API testing challenges and ways to overcome them:
1. Getting familiar with APIs
Challenge: The first challenge is getting used to the approach of API testing and how you can make it work to your advantage. Most QA teams are well-versed in traditional software testing approaches. However, API testing is an art in itself, and it demands a deep understanding of the phenomenon. Therefore, you need to educate your team about API testing in detail and give them exercises on a pilot project—also, conduct daily or weekly training sessions for QA teams.
Solution: You can develop a solid API testing automation strategy only when each team member has the skill set to execute it. So, start providing training on what API testing is, its benefits, and how it impacts your application’s business layer. Then, regularly review the team’s work on API testing by applying rules and guidelines you’ve created for the team. Also, hire QA people with knowledge and familiarity with API testing. They can make the team more versatile.
2. Having a track of all your APIs
Challenge: Modern software development is one massive network of APIs. There are hundreds of thousands of APIs involved in one software development project. Tracking all APIs becomes challenging. All APIs used in the application development are independent of each other.
So, in the middle of the project, it would never be an appropriate solution if you start finding the APIs used in your application. When the QA team begins API testing processes, they need information about how many APIs developers used in the project? How often were they updated? And What was the impact of those changes on the application’s functionality?
Solution: There is a one-stop solution for all this mess. Create an API inventory and tell developers to update them regularly whenever they add, update, or delete any API right through the length and breadth of the software engineering.
3. Designing appropriate test cases
Challenge: The test case design is the key to success in any software testing, especially API testing. It directly impacts application logic and verifies if it’s working correctly or not. Unfortunately, it generally happens that QA teams develop test cases for API testing by guessing what they may need to review in an API. Unfortunately, this guessing game comes to bite you at the time of launch as you’re far away from actual scenarios, so your product may encounter an error that you don’t expect. So, how to design appropriate test cases is an issue.
Solution: The solution is to design test cases by keeping your end-users in mind what they will feel like when they interact with any of your APIs, how you can enhance their digital experience, and the components that are becoming the bottleneck to that. These detailed analyses will provide an objective perspective of where you stand in test case creation and what more you can do to make it more effective. Therefore, start working on these aspects as soon as possible.
4. Prioritizing test cases
Challenge: We have analyzed how test case creation is essential and can impact the effectiveness of API testing. One of the aspects that makes a massive impact on test case creation is prioritizing test cases. You need to know what test cases need to get tested first and what at the end. Various API testing tools help cover most test case scenarios, but no tool can cover every possibility. Unfortunately, that’s where most QA teams haven’t found their feet. Read More...
