In this article, I will be talking about variables and simple API requests with Karate Framework. In the first part, I talked about introducing Karate and did a simple setup.
If you don't have any previous experiences with BDD, you can refer to this article about what the BDD is and its usage. Now, let's continue with the variables in Karate.
Variables
You can define the variables with the def keyword in the feature file directly. The structure should be a def keyword followed by a variable name and a value. It is like defining variables in any programming language. Here is the one simple usage of the variables.
Scenario: this scenario is for defining variables
* def firstVariable = 12
* def secondVariable = 'cakes'
* print 'firstVariable -> ' + firstVariable, 'secondVariable -> ' + secondVariable
Output of the above scenario is:
10:42:56.259 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] INFO com.intuit.karate - [print] firstVariable -> 12 secondVariable -> cakesIn the example above, I have shown you the simple usage of the variables. But in the API testing, you need to define a complex JSON object and do your operations with this JSON object. Now, let's create a JSON object in the feature file and print it.
Scenario: defining JSON object and print it
Given def jsonObject =
"""
[
{
"name": "jack",
"phone" : 15435667788
},
{
"name": "jennie",
"phone" : 13443567234
}
]
"""
* print jsonObject[1].name, jsonObject[1].phone
And here is the console output:
10:45:05.097 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] INFO com.intuit.karate - [print] jennie 13443567234As you see, it is convenient and practical. You are not responsible for any operations back other than writing Gherkin syntax.
Karate-config.js
You will need to have some files that you can write for centralized data. You can use the karate-config.js file to write your global variables like base URL, environment, etc. Here is the template of the karate-config.js file:
function fn() {
var env = karate.env; // get system property 'karate.env'
karate.log('karate.env system property was:', env);
if (!env) {
env = 'dev';
}
var config = {
env: env,
myVarName: 'hello karate',
baseUrl: 'https://www.kloia.com/'
}
if (env == 'dev') {
// customize
// e.g. config.foo = 'bar';
} else if (env == 'e2e') {
// customize
}
return config;
}
This is a simple JS function. You can define the variables in the config as a JSON format (“key: value” structure) and use this variable name directly in the feature file. Also, you can define variables based on the environment that you may want to specify different values. In the example below, you will see a basic usage of the karate-config.js file above.
Scenario: using karate-config
* print baseUrl
* print myVarName
And the console output is:
11:04:08.750 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] INFO com.intuit.karate - [print] https://www.kloia.com/
11:04:08.753 [ForkJoinPool-1-worker-1] INFO com.intuit.karate - [print] hello karate
API basics
Briefly, the goal of doing API testing is sending requests to some services and matching the response, and validating the result. So I can say that your first task is sending a request, and the second one is to verify the response. Let's see what you need to know for sending requests, how to send a request on Karate, then learn the assertions later.
Base URL
You can define the base URL in Karate with the <url> keyword. Just write the url then base URL after that.
Given url 'https://www.kloia.com/'
Path Params
After you define the URL, you need to define a path to send a request. You can handle path parameters with the path keyword in Karate.
And path 'blog'
Query Params
Some endpoints present query parameters to search for specific keywords. Here is the usage of the query params in Karate:
And path 'blog'
And param search = 'karatePosts'
GET Request
You can read the data from the API with a get request. Here is the simple get request with Karate.
Scenario: Get request
Given url 'https://www.kloia.com/'
And path 'blog', 'karate'
When method GET
Then status 200Did you notice the last line of the test? In Karate, you can easily verify the status code of the response with the status keyword. I will explain the rest of the assertions below, but you can use the example above for status verification right now.
I want to show you this GET request with Java and Ruby so that you can compare all of them and see how Karate is more practical than others.
@Test
public void testSomeTest(){
baseURI = "https://www.kloia.com/";
Response response = given().
pathParam("key", "karate").
when().
get("/blog/{key}");
assertEquals(response.statusCode(), 200);
}Java simple get example
def testSimple
api_url = "https://www.kloia.com/"
path = "blog"
resp = HTTParty.get(api_url + path, headers: { })
resp.code.should == 200
end
Ruby simple get example
As you see the example above, if we compare Karate and other languages, we can easily say that Karate's coding is very straightforward.
POST Request
You can create new data on the services with a post request. In Karate, you can use the request keyword to attach the request body to your request and method post for sending requests.
Scenario: Post request
* def user =
"""
{
"name": "Jane",
"username": "jane_pool",
"phone": 12546758485
}
}
"""
Given url 'https://www.kloia.com/'
And request user
When method POST
Then status 201
PUT Request
You can use the put method just like a post request and update the data.
Scenario: Put request
* def user =
"""
{
"name": "Jane",
"username": "jane_forest",
"phone": 12546758485
}
}
"""
Given url 'https://www.kloia.com/'
And path 'user', 129
And request user
When method PUT
Then status 200
DELETE Request
You can remove data with a delete request, and the method delete keyword will handle this request.
Scenario: Delete request
Given url 'https://www.kloia.com/'
And path 'user', 129
When method DELETE
Then status 204
As you see in the examples above, you can easily send your API requests with the Karate framework without doing anything other than writing your test scripts with Gherkin syntax.
Assertions
As a tester, you are responsible for verifying responses and making related assertions. I have shown you one of the assertions, status verification, but there are many Karate Framework assertions available. You can handle all verifications with 'match' keywords. I will show you some of them now.
Scenario: Matchers examples
* def jsonBody =
"""
{
"category": {
"id": 1,
"name": "cats"
},
"name": "kitty",
"photoUrls": [
"www.kitty.com"
],
"tags": [
{
"id": 0,
"name": "sweet"
}
],
"status": "available"
}
"""
Given url 'https://petstore.swagger.io/v2'
And path 'pet'
And request jsonBody
When method POST
Then status 200
And match response.category == jsonBody.category
And match response.id == '#present'
And match response.name == jsonBody.name
And match responseHeaders['Date'] == '#notnull'
And match each response.tags == { 'id': '#number', 'name': '#string'}‘#present’ is for verifying data is present or not.
‘#notnull’ is for checking if the data is null or not. You can also use ‘#null’
‘#number’, ‘#string’ will verify the data types.
each will loop all the responses values if the response includes an array. So you can easily verify all of the values in the response body.
It is just like talking to someone. Quite easy. These matching examples are only some examples of assertions; more matches are featured in Karate to use in your test scripts.
This article introduced the simple usage of Karate. The following article will discuss more complex operations like reading data files, callers, and scenario outline structures.
Stay on the line and keep learning...
Resources: https://github.com/intuit/karate