Forum Discussion

kenm's avatar
kenm
Contributor
8 years ago

Best approach to testing async API calls?

Good afternoon all,   First post so please be gentle  :)   Just to give a little context... we're in the process of testing APIs that perform operations asynchronously. Naturally, from a test per...
kenm's avatar
kenm
Contributor

Thanks Radford!

That would work perfectly in my context, my Groovy skills are on the novice side at present.

 

Don't suppose you'd be able to share your script/a sanitised version to give me a step up? Appreciate it.

Ken

Radford's avatar
Radford
Super Contributor
8 years ago

While I don't have scripts I can share easily at hand, there are a couple of things I can point out with regard to interacting with Ready API to help you on your way.

 

Firstly have you seen Groovy script Get Data functionality? This will allow you to get data from a previous step using the GUI. This will help you learn the corrrect syntax.

 

Secondly, you'll see that Groovy test steps provide the script with among others a variable called testRunner this provides several methods of interest to you:

 

testRunner.gotoStepByName("Test Case Name")

 

 

This will allow you to transfer execution to another named test step within the current test case, and

 

testRunner.fail("Insert your fail reason here.")

 

 

This will allow you fail a test for whatever reason you chose, for example if you've reached your self defined retry limit.

 

Note: If you're just beginning with Groovy scripting, perhaps someone else may be able to offer a better non-Groovy alternative to your question.

  • kenm's avatar
    kenm
    Contributor
    8 years ago

    Thanks Radford! Appreciate your time... just doing some experimentation at the moment and hopefully will have it sorted reasonably quickly. I've a lot of historical scripting experience so shouldn't be too alien.

     

    Cheers for flagging the get.data and testrunner object... really appreciate your time!

     

    Once I get something simple nailed down I'll prob post a reply here that will hopefully help someone else out down the line.

  • kenm's avatar
    kenm
    Contributor
    8 years ago

    Hi Radford,

     

    Can I ask you a quick question?

     

    I've made good progress on a groovy script that meets my need. 

     

     

    Test Script Steps:

        Issue POST to API

        Delay for Orchestration to complete - 5 seconds

        Verify the Status of the automation request

        Retry the verification in the event of failure up to timeout - GROOVY SCRIPT

            Inside here I'm checking the status of  "Verify the Status of the automation request" step

            If it failed I'll retry it

            If it has passed then perfect!

            Has looping logic to retry a certain amount of times etc.

     

    The challenge I'm having is that the TestCase reports failure if I've failed first time through then passed on second iteration. Do I need to override a previous test fail? Can I reset overall testcase status etc? Any guidance you can give here? Or anyone else?  :)

     

    Appreciate any help

     

    • Radford's avatar
      Radford
      Super Contributor
      8 years ago

      Hi kenm,

       

      I'm not 100% sure if I follow, but I think I might understand.

       

      When I do my "has the async call completed" check (Step 4 in my post above), if it hasn't completed, I don't actually fail the test, I just use the gotoStepByName("Test Case Name") functionality to jump back to the delay step, which will then rerun the check after the delay, the only additional thing I do is write a log file message to say I've jumped back. I usually set my delay times so on average the retry loop will take about 2 or 3 loop backs before the async call is completed.

       

      I only actually fail the test if my retry loop reaches some abritary high limit that means something serious has gone wrong and it will never complete, usually about 20 retrys.

       

      Hope that make sense?

       

      Note that in my example I am separating out the verifying that the async call has completed (step 4) and has the async call actually done what I want it too (step 5).

       

       

      • kenm's avatar
        kenm
        Contributor
        8 years ago

        Thanks Radford,

         

        That's the issue I'm trying to overcome/presenting me issues.

         

        I.e. my "wait until async call is complete" includes assertions... so I'll either need to figure out a way of working around that or adopt same approach as yours and verify without assertions so we don't trip it into a testcase failure state.

         

        Time to do some more digging... really appreciate your time/thoughts here so far!