Airborne

RSpec driven API testing framework

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Airborne

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RSpec driven API testing framework inspired by frisby.js

Installation

Install Airborne:

gem install airborne

Or add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'airborne'

Creating Tests

require 'airborne'

describe 'sample spec' do
  it 'should validate types' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" } 
    expect_json_types({name: :string})
  end

  it 'should validate values' do 
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" } 
    expect_json({:name => "John Doe"})
  end
end

When calling expect_json_types, these are the valid types that can be tested against:

  • :int or :integer
  • :float
  • :bool or :boolean
  • :string
  • :object
  • :array
  • :array_of_integers or :array_of_ints
  • :array_of_floats
  • :array_of_strings
  • :array_of_booleans or :array_of_bools
  • :array_of_objects
  • :array_of_arrays

If the properties are optional and may not appear in the response, you can append _or_null to the types above.

describe 'sample spec' do
  it 'should validate types' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" } or { "name" : "John Doe", "age" : 45 }
    expect_json_types({name: :string, age: :int_or_null})
  end
end

Additionally, if an entire object could be null, but you'd still want to test the types if it does exist, you can wrap the expectations in a call to optional:

it 'should allow optional nested hash' do
  get '/simple_path_get' #may or may not return coordinates
  expect_json_types("address.coordinates", optional({latitude: :float, longitude: :float}))
end

Additionally, when calling expect_json, you can provide a regex pattern in a call to regex:

describe 'sample spec' do
  it 'should validate types' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" }
    expect_json({name: regex("^John")})
  end
end

When calling expect_json or expect_json_types, you can optionally provide a block and run your own rspec expectations:

describe 'sample spec' do
  it 'should validate types' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" }
    expect_json({name: -> (name){expect(name.length).to eq(8)}})
  end
end

Making requests

Airborne uses rest_client to make the HTTP request, and supports all HTTP verbs. When creating a test, you can call any of the following methods: get, post, put, patch, delete. This will then give you access the following properties:

  • response - The HTTP response returned from the request
  • headers - A symbolized hash of the response headers returned by the request
  • body - The raw HTTP body returned from the request
  • json_body - A symbolized hash representation of the JSON returned by the request

For example:

it 'should validate types' do
  get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get' #json api that returns { "name" : "John Doe" } 
  name = json_body[:name] #name will equal "John Doe"
  body_as_string = body
end

When calling any of the methods above, you can pass request headers to be used. 

get 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', {'x-auth-token' => 'my_token'}

For requests that require a body (post, put, patch) you can pass the body as a hash as well:

post 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', {:name => 'John Doe'}, {'x-auth-token' => 'my_token'}

Testing Rack Applications

If you have an existing Rack application like sinatra or grape you can run Airborne against your application and test without actually having a server running. To do that, just specify your rack application in your Airborne configuration:

Airborne.configure do |config|
    config.rack_app = MySinatraApp
end

Under the covers, Airborne uses rack-test to make the requests. (Rails applications are still not working correctly, support for Rails will come soon!)

API

  • expect_json_types - Tests the types of the JSON property values returned
  • expect_json - Tests the values of the JSON property values returned
  • expect_json_keys - Tests the existence of the specified keys in the JSON object
  • expect_status - Tests the HTTP status code returned
  • expect_header - Tests for a specified header in the response
  • expect_header_contains - Partial match test on a specified header

Path Matching

When calling expect_json_types, expect_json or expect_json_keys you can optionally specify a path as a first parameter.

For example, if our API returns the following JSON:

{
  "name": "Alex",
  "address": {
    "street": "Area 51",
    "city": "Roswell",
    "state": "NM",
    "coordinates": {
      "latitude": 33.3872,
      "longitude": 104.5281
    }
  }
}

This test would only test the address object:

describe 'path spec' do
  it 'should allow simple path and verify only that path' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_path_get'
    expect_json_types('address', {street: :string, city: :string, state: :string, coordinates: :object })
    #or this
    expect_json_types('address', {street: :string, city: :string, state: :string, coordinates: { latitude: :float, longitude: :float } })
  end
end

Or, to test the existence of specific keys:

it 'should allow nested paths' do
  get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_path_get'
  expect_json_keys('address', [:street, :city, :state, :coordinates])    
end

Alternativley, if we only want to test coordinates we can dot into just the coordinates:

it 'should allow nested paths' do
  get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_path_get'
  expect_json('address.coordinates', {latitude: 33.3872, longitude: 104.5281} )     
end

When dealing with arrays, we can optionally test all (*) or a single (? - any, 0 - index) element of the array:

Given the following JSON:

{
  "cars": [
    {
      "make": "Tesla",
      "model": "Model S"
    },
    {
      "make": "Lamborghini",
      "model": "Aventador"
    }
  ]
}

We can test against just the first car like this:

it 'should index into array and test against specific element' do 
  get '/array_api'
  expect_json('cars.0', {make: "Tesla", model: "Model S"})
end

To test the types of all elements in the array:

it 'should test all elements of the array' do 
  get 'http://example.com/api/v1/array_api'
  expect_json('cars.?', {make: "Tesla", model: "Model S"}) # tests that one car in array matches the tesla
  expect_json_types('cars.*', {make: :string, model: :string}) # tests all cars in array for make and model of type string
end

* and ? work for nested arrays as well. Given the following JSON:

{
  "cars": [
    {
      "make": "Tesla",
      "model": "Model S",
      "owners": [
        {
          "name": "Bart Simpson"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "make": "Lamborghini",
      "model": "Aventador",
      "owners": [
        {
          "name": "Peter Griffin"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}


it 'should check all nested arrays for specified elements' do
  get 'http://example.com/api/v1/array_with_nested'
  expect_json_types('cars.*.owners.*', {name: :string})
end

Configuration

When setting up Airborne, you can call configure just like you would with rspec:

#config is the RSpec configuration and can be used just like it
Airborne.configure.do |config|
  config.include MyModule
end

Additionally, you can specify a base_url and default headers to be used on every request (unless overridden in the actual request):

Airborne.configure.do |config|
  config.base_url = 'http://example.com/api/v1'
  config.headers = {'x-auth-token' => 'my_token'}
end

describe 'spec' do
  it 'now we no longer need the full url' do
    get '/simple_get'
    expect_json_types({name: :string})
  end
end

Run it from the CLI

$ cd your/project
$ rspec spec

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2014 brooklyndev, sethpollack

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.