Make an API call
To make an API request open Tester module, create a new tab and enter your url in the url section. Select a http method type and click Run. You can see the response below under Response section.
Preparing the Request
URL
Enter the URL you want to run in the URL field. If you want to use http or https then please specify it in the url.
Ex: https://localhost/todo/create.php
If no http protocol is specified then default http:// will be used.
HTTP method
Select the required http method type from the drop-down for example GET, POST, PUT etc
Run / Run in loop
To make the request to the specified URL click on the Run button.
Want to run your API multiple times or want to populate your database with lot of data then no need to hit Run multiple times. You can run your API in a loop. To do so click on the little arrow beside the Run button. This will allow you to enter the number of times you want to run the API. Fill in the value and hit Run beside it. Now apic will run the URL in a loop till it reaches the specified count.
For sending random data with each API request refer Sending random data with each API call section below.
URL Parameters / Query Parameters
URL parameters can be specified under the URL Params tab in the Request section. Fill in the key and value and hit Run. apic will automatically urlencode it and append it to the URL.
Ex:
For above request parameters you while running you URL will look like
http://your/url?id=585a449928ea381be8d881b5&name=test
Alternatively you can add the URL/Query parameters directly in the URL field itself.
Headers
If you want to send any header along with the request then you can fill that up under the Headers tab in the Request section. This will open a view similar to the URL params where you can specify the header name and value in the left and right inputs respectively.
Body
You can send extra information in the Body of your request for all request typpes except for GET. You can specify body in types
x-www-form-urlencoded
This is the default content type. When you fill up a regular form in a website and submit, it uses this content type to send the data. If you are sending simple plain text data then this is the right content type. Fill in the key value pair and hit Run. Using this will URLencode your data while making the API request. More information here.
You can also send dynamic values each time you run the request by setting up Environments or using apic's data generation API. Using Environments will allow you to send data based on the values defined on your selected environment. Apic's data generation API will generate random data each time you make a request.
multipart/form-data
The content type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" is inefficient for sending large quantities of binary data or text containing non-ASCII characters. The content type "multipart/form-data" should be used for submitting forms that contain files, non-ASCII data, and binary data. More information here.
Under the form data tab you can set the key name and from the dropdown at extreme right you can select the type, either text or file. For text you can enter the text value and for files you can click on the browse button and select the file.
Here also you can use Environments or apic's data generation API for sending dynamic data.
raw
for content types other than x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data, you can use raw type to send the data. you can select the content-type from the dropdown beside it (JSON - application/json, XML - application/xml etc) and enter the value in the editor below that. As described above you can use Environments or apic's data generation API for sending dynamic data.
Sending random data with each API call
To send random data each time you fire the request, you can use APIC's random data generation functions.
For example for generating random email use apic.randomEmail() with a pair of curly braces.
Environment
You can select an environment to run your APIs from the dropdown present at the top right corner of the Request panel. Selecting an environment will allow you to switch between contexts, for example your local system, test environment or production system etc. Know more about how to use environments here.
Save request
You can save your current request for future use by clicking on the Save button in the top right corner. This will open a window to select the folder you want to save. If you don't have any folders created then first create a folder in the left panel before saving.
If you want a copy of an already saved request then click on the small arrow beside the save button and select Save as.
Authorization
If you API is asking for Authorization then you can provide that from the Authorization tab. Select the required authorization type from the dropdown and fill up the details. BasicAuth - Basic authentication is a method for a HTTP user agent to provide a user name and password when making a request. Your provides user name and password will be encodes with base64 algorithm (not safe) and sent via Authorization header while making the request.
DigestAuth - APIC supports Digest authentication. To add Digest authentication, select Digest Auth under the Authorization tab and fill in the details. This will generate the auth string and add it to Authorization header. The supported encryption algorithm for generation the token are MD5 and MD5-sess.
OAuth 1.0 - APIC supports authentication via OAuth 1.x. Select OAuth 1 under the Authentication tab and fill in the details. The generated auth string will be added to the URL as query parameters. If you want to add it to the header then select the checkbox labeled Add auth params to header.You can also URLencode your auth signature by selecting the checkbox labeled Encode OAuth signature
Hawk Auth - We have added support for Hawk Authentication. Filling in the required fields under Hawk Auth should henerate the auth token add add it to the Authorization header.
OAuth 2.0 - Coming soon
Scripts
Scripts help you to carry out the actual testing for your APIs. You can add 2 types of scripts; pre-run script which is executed before the request is made and post-run script which is executes after the response is received. Learn more about scripting here.
Schema
You can specify a JSON schema under this section to test if the response you receive from the API is matching to the specified schema or not. Know more about schema validation here.
Next: Decoding the Response
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