Introduction to HTTP and REST API testing

This workshop is an introduction to the world of HTTP and REST API testing for direct test or as prerequisites for your end to end test automation suite.

You will learn:

how HTTP works as an application layer protocol
what is a REST API and why they are now so common
how to setup a basic API testing/rpa project using the RequestsLibrary
how to perform different HTTP requests
how to validate the response
how to handle shared session and authentication
what to address with api testing in your test suite

We will use the new 0.9 pre-release version and we will talk about the RequestsLibrary development roadmap.

Most of the workshop is hands on and highly interactive: we will use mob programming techniques.

What you need

I will use PyCharm as IDE (but of course you can use your own)
git
Python
Docker (needed to run a local HTTP server)

How to setup a basic API testing/rpa project using the RequestsLibrary

Checkout a new project from git

From cli:

git clone git@github.com:RobotFramework-Italia/http-api-testing-workshop.git

or

git clone https://github.com/RobotFramework-Italia/http-api-testing-workshop.git

Or gui:

Setup a new Python virtual environment

Install the needed dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run a local HTTP sever with Docker

docker run -p 5000:80 kennethreitz/httpbin

Wait until everything is up and running and then open the browser at this url: http://localhost:5000/

Run a self check test

robot selfcheck/selfcheck.robot