API testing is a crucial aspect of software development, ensuring that applications work as expected by testing their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs allow different software systems to communicate with each other, and their reliability is key to the seamless operation of applications. This blog post will introduce you to API testing, explaining different request types like POST, PUT, etc., and provide a short introduction to API testing with the requests library in Python.
Understanding the Basics of API Testing
Before diving into code, it’s important to understand the different types of requests you might make during API testing:
- GET: Retrieves data from a specified source.
- POST: Sends data to a server to create a new resource.
- PUT: Updates existing data on the server.
- DELETE: Removes existing data from the server.
Each of these request types corresponds to a standard operation in database management and plays a crucial role in the lifecycle of data within applications.
API Testing with the requests Library
The Python requests library is a simple yet powerful HTTP library, perfect for making various types of API requests. Below, we’ll go through examples of how to use the requests library to test APIs by making GET and POST requests.
In the next lesson we will explain how to use create those api tests using the examples I created on my practiceautomatedtesting.com websitse. do not worry provided in my GitHub repository at API Testing section on GitHub offers resources for learning and practicing API test automation.