REST assured

Overview

Stub/spy http(s) based external dependencies in your integration/acceptance tests.

Description

In a nutshell, you can:

• replace external data sources with predefined data (stubbing)
• verify requests to external services (spying)
• simulate different behavior of external services using web UI; useful in development

REST-assured runs in a standalone process. It can be configured at runtime (via ruby client library or REST api) to respond to any request with arbitrary content, status, headers, etc.

The idea is that in "test" environment your app is making calls to REST-assured rather than to real external services.

Playground

Example project

Set up

You are going to need ruby >= 1.9.2 on Linux/MacOS. Also, one of sqlite3, postgres or mysql.

In ruby project

# Gemfile
gem 'sqlite3' # or mysql2 or pg
              # use 'jdbcsqlite3' and 'jdbcmysql' for jruby
gem 'rest-assured'

# env.rb/spec_helper.rb
require 'rest-assured'

RestAssured::Server.start(database: ':memory:', port: 7899) # or any other option available on command line
# Or, you can specify an instance that is already running somewhere:
RestAssured::Server.address = 'http://wacky-duckling.herokuapp.com'

Standalone instance

Install db client gem:

$ gem install sqlite3 # or mysql2 or pg

If using mysql/postgres, create database rest_assured accessible by user root with no password. Those are defaults and can be changed with cli options.

Then install gem and run:

$ gem install rest-assured
$ rest-assured &

Or clone and run:

$ git clone git://github.com/artemave/REST-assured.git
$ cd REST-assured && bundle install
$ ./bin/rest-assured -d :memory: & # in-memory sqlite db

This starts up an instance of rest-assured on port 4578. It is accessible via REST or web interfaces on http://localhost:4578

Various options (such as ssl, port, db credentials, etc.) are available through command line options. Check out rest-assured -h to see what they are.

Heroku

You can also deploy it to heroku:

$ git clone git://github.com/artemave/REST-assured.git
$ cd REST-assured

$ gem install heroku
$ heroku login # assuming you already have an account
$ heroku create --stack cedar

$ git push heroku master

Usage

REST-assured can do two things: respond to a particular path and method (e.g. GET /stuff/v2?thing=1) and redirect requests based on a pattern (e.g. all /foo* will redirect to http://example.com/bar). Both of these are available to create/read/delete in runtime via api.

Ruby API

REST-assured provides ruby client library to work with doubles (but not redirects). Check out 'Ruby API' section in live documentation for full reference.

Create double:

RestAssured::Double.create(fullpath: '/products', content: 'this is content')

Now GET http://localhost:4578/products will be returning this is content.

You can also verify what requests happen on a double (spy on it). Say this is a Given part of a test:

@double = RestAssured::Double.create(fullpath: '/products', verb: 'POST')

Then let us assume that http://localhost:4578/products got POSTed as a result of some actions in When part. Now we can examine requests happened on that double in Then part:

@double.wait_for_requests(1, timeout: 10) # defaults to 5 seconds
# or, if waiting for specific amount of requests does not suit the test, just
@double.reload # before verifying

req = @double.requests.first

req.body.should == some_expected_payload
JSON.parse(req.params).should == expected_params_hash
JSON.parse(req.rack_env)['HTTP_ACCEPT'].should == 'text/html'

Use REST api to clear doubles/redirects between tests:

RestClient.delete "#{RestAssured::Server.address}/redirects/all"
RestClient.delete "#{RestAssured::Server.address}/doubles/all"

REST API

For using REST-assured from non-ruby environments.

Create double

HTTP POST to /doubles.json creates a double and returns its json representation. The following options can be passed as request parameters:

• fullpath - e.g., /some/api/object, or with parameters in query string (useful for doubling GETs) - /some/other/api/object?a=2&b=c. Mandatory.
• content - whatever you want this double to respond with. Optional.
• verb - one of http the following http verbs: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE. Optional. GET is default.
• status - status returned when double is requested. Optional. 200 is default.
• response_headers - key/value map of headers. Optional.

Example:

    $ curl -d 'fullpath=/api/something&content=awesome&response_headers%5BContent-Type%5D=text%2Fhtml' http://localhost:4578/doubles
    {"double":{"active":true,"content":"awesome","description":null,"fullpath":"/api/something","id":1,"response_headers":{"Content-Type":"text/html"},"status":200,"verb":"GET"}}

    $ curl http://localhost:4578/api/something
    awesome

If there is more than one double for the same fullpath and verb, the last created one gets served. In UI you can manually control which double is 'active' (gets served).

Get double state

HTTP GET to /doubles/:id.json returns json with double current state. Use id from create json as :id.

Example:

$ curl http://localhost:4578/doubles/1.json | prettify_json.rb
{
    "double": {
        "verb": "GET",
        "fullpath": "/api/something",
        "response_headers": {
            "Content-Type": "text/html"
        },
        "id": 1,
        "requests": [
            {
                "double_id": 1,
                "created_at": "2011-12-12T11:13:33+00:00",
                "body": "",
                "rack_env": "{\"SERVER_SOFTWARE\":\"thin 1.3.1 codename Triple Espresso\",\"SERVER_NAME\":\"localhost\",\"rack.version\":[1,0],\"rack.multithread\":false,\"rack.multiprocess\":false,\"rack.run_once\":false,\"REQUEST_METHOD\":\"GET\",\"REQUEST_PATH\":\"/api/something\",\"PATH_INFO\":\"/api/something\",\"REQUEST_URI\":\"/api/something\",\"HTTP_VERSION\":\"HTTP/1.1\",\"HTTP_USER_AGENT\":\"curl/7.19.7 (universal-apple-darwin10.0) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8l zlib/1.2.3\",\"HTTP_HOST\":\"localhost:4578\",\"HTTP_ACCEPT\":\"*/*\",\"GATEWAY_INTERFACE\":\"CGI/1.2\",\"SERVER_PORT\":\"4578\",\"QUERY_STRING\":\"\",\"SERVER_PROTOCOL\":\"HTTP/1.1\",\"rack.url_scheme\":\"http\",\"SCRIPT_NAME\":\"\",\"REMOTE_ADDR\":\"127.0.0.1\",\"async.callback\":{},\"async.close\":{},\"rack.session\":{\"session_id\":\"2d206d4edb880d41ae098bf0551c6904a4914f8632d101606b5304d4f651ce52\",\"tracking\":{\"HTTP_USER_AGENT\":\"06e79511d71287ca292dced4ef07c8fff9400376\",\"HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING\":\"da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709\",\"HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE\":\"da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709\"},\"__FLASH__\":{}},\"rack.session.options\":{\"key\":\"rack.session\",\"path\":\"/\",\"domain\":null,\"expire_after\":null,\"secure\":false,\"httponly\":true,\"defer\":false,\"renew\":false,\"sidbits\":128,\"secure_random\":{\"pid\":7885},\"secret\":\"bf80c75d713c92d2e3f94ea58be318c3f8988a3ed79d997f9cf883cc7aab1141225477ed81da7fe62ac77ecac3f979d255328dcbe8caa1bb342f4be6cb850983\",\"coder\":{},\"id\":\"2d206d4edb880d41ae098bf0551c6904a4914f8632d101606b5304d4f651ce52\"},\"rack.request.cookie_hash\":{},\"rack.session.unpacked_cookie_data\":{\"session_id\":\"2d206d4edb880d41ae098bf0551c6904a4914f8632d101606b5304d4f651ce52\"},\"x-rack.flash\":{\"opts\":{\"sweep\":true},\"store\":{\"session_id\":\"2d206d4edb880d41ae098bf0551c6904a4914f8632d101606b5304d4f651ce52\",\"tracking\":{\"HTTP_USER_AGENT\":\"06e79511d71287ca292dced4ef07c8fff9400376\",\"HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING\":\"da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709\",\"HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE\":\"da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709\"},\"__FLASH__\":{}},\"flagged\":[]},\"rack.request.query_string\":\"\",\"rack.request.query_hash\":{}}",
                "id": 1,
                "params": "{}"
            }
        ],
        "content": "awesome",
        "description": null,
        "status": 200,
        "active": true
    }
}

The above assumes that that double has been requested once. Request history is in requests array (in chronological order). Each element contains the following data (keys):

• body - request payload
• params - request parameters. json
• created_at - request timestamp
• rack_env - raw request dump (json) including request headers

Delete all doubles

HTTP DELETE to /doubles/all deletes all doubles. Useful for cleaning up between tests.

Redirects

It is sometimes desirable to only double certain calls while letting others through to the "real" services. Meet Redirects. Kind of "rewrite rules" for requests that didn't match any double.

Another use for redirects is setting up a "default" double that matches multiple fullpaths. If a redirect pattern matches a defined double then it will act like a double and respond directly. If it does not match a double then it will return HTTP 303 redirect instead. Note that HTTP redirects are usually converted to GET requests by HTTP clients.

Here is the rest API for managing redirects:

Create redirect

HTTP POST to /redirects.json creates redirect. The following options can be passed as request parameters:

• pattern - regex (perl5 style) tested against request fullpath. e.g, ^/auth/(.*). Mandatory
• to - url base e.g, http://example.com/api/\1?p=1 where \1 is a reference to captured group from the pattern. Mandatory

Example:

    $ curl -d 'pattern=^/auth&to=https://myserver.com/api' http://localhost:4578/redirects

Now request (any verb) to http://localhost:4578/auth/services/1 will get redirected to https://myserver.com/api/. Provided of course there is no double matched for that fullpath and verb. Captured group in pattern can be referenced from replacement e.g. \1, \2, etc. Much like rewrite rules, redirects are evaluated in order (of creation). In UI you can manually rearrange the order.

Delete all redirects

HTTP DELETE to /redirects/all deletes all redirects. Useful for cleaning up between tests.

Running tests

Tests require there to be mysql database rest_assured_test accessible by root with no password. Cucumber tests also need firefox.

$ git clone git://github.com/artemave/REST-assured.git
$ cd rest-assured && bundle install
$ bundle exec rspec spec
$ bundle exec cucumber

Author

Artem Avetisyan