Airborne

RSpec driven API testing framework

Looking for Project Maintainers

I am looking for project maintainers to help keep airborne up to date and bug-free while avoiding feature creep and maintaining backwards compatibility.

Comment here if you would like to help out.

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
• :date
• :object
• :null
• :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

Calling expect_json_sizes actually make use of the above feature and call expect_json under the hood:

describe 'sample spec' do
  it 'should validate types' do
    get 'http://example.com/api/v1/simple_get_collection' #json api that returns { "ids" : [1, 2, 3, 4] }
    expect_json_sizes(ids: 4)
  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, head, options. 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 well:

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

The body may be any JSON-serializable type, as long as you want to post application/json content type. You may set a different content type and post a string body this way:

post 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', "Hello there!", { content_type: 'text/plain' }

For requests that require Query params you can pass a params hash into headers.

post 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', { }, { 'params' => {'param_key' => 'param_value' } }

(Not) Verifying SSL Certificates

SSL certificate verification is enabled by default (specifically, OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER).

Carefully consider how you use this. It's not a solution for getting around a failed SSL cert verification; rather, it's intended for testing systems that don't have a legitimate SSL cert, such as a development or test environment.

You can override this behavior per request:

verify_ssl = false
post 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', "Hello there!", { content_type: 'text/plain' }, verify_ssl

or with a global Airborne configuration:

Airborne.configure do |config|
  config.verify_ssl = false # equivalent to OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
end

Note the per-request option always overrides the Airborne configuration:

before do
  Airborne.configuration.verify_ssl = false
end

it 'will still verify the SSL certificate' do
  verify_ssl = true
  post 'http://example.com/api/v1/my_api', "Hello there!", { content_type: 'text/plain' }, verify_ssl
end

You can use the verify_ssl setting to override your global defaults in test blocks like this:

describe 'test something', verify_ssl: false do
end

OR

describe 'test something' do
  Airborne.configuration.verify_ssl = false
end

This feature currently isn't supported when testing loaded Rack applications (see "Testing Rack Applications" below). If you need to set verify_ssl: false, then we recommend starting your Rack app server and sending the airborne HTTP requests as you would when testing any other service.

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

If you're testing an API you've written in Rails, Airborne plays along with rspec-rails:

require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe HomeController, :type => :controller do
  describe 'GET index' do
    it 'returns correct types' do
      get :index, :format => 'json' #if your route responds to both html and json
      expect_json_types(foo: :string)
    end
  end
end

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_json_sizes - Tests the sizes of the JSON property values returned, also test if the values are arrays
• 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, expect_json_keys or expect_json_sizes 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

Alternatively, 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