REST API Testing with Cucumber

To test an API we are working on, I wanted to document/test the API so that client developers would be able to use theses specification to learn how to use the API and the same documentation would be used to test our API.

After some research, I settled (for now) to use Cucumber, json_spec and cucumber-api-steps.

These allow me to write this kind of test against the API:

Feature: User API

Background:

Given the following users exist:

| id | name | password | email |

| 1 | ben | abcdef | ben@email.com |

| 2 | jon | bcdefg | jon@email.com |

When I sign in as "ben@email.com/abcdef"

And I send and accept JSON




Scenario: GET /users

When I send a GET request for "/users"

Then the response status should be "200"

And the JSON should be:

"""

[

{

"email": "ben@email.com",

"name": "ben"

},

{

"email": "jon@email.com",

"name": "jon"

}

]

"""

And the JSON at "0/name" should be "ben"




Scenario: GET users/1

When I send a GET request for "/users/1"

Then the response status should be "200"

And the JSON should be:

"""

{

"email": "ben@email.com",

"name": "ben"

}

"""

And the JSON at "name" should be "ben"