prclt/pedantic

Pedantic allows any client to discover when a fixture no longer complies with a published API.

Who is Pedantic for?

Pedantic is for client maintainers (front end, mobile etc..) who wish to automatically maintain test fixtures against services with an API specification defined in RAML 0.8.

Rationale

Assuming the client developers write automated tests, it is best that client tests do not make external HTTP requests during the test process since that can lead to non-deterministic test results. HTTP calls during testing are often avoided by creating mock requests in json. While mock fixtures prevent external calls during testing, they do not prevent or detect a service provider's API changes. When the API changes, tests which use outdated mocks continue to pass even though the actual client may no longer functions correctly.

Pedantic is a lightweight service designed to run on the same host as the test client and is accessible via localhost. Provide Pedantic with the API definition in RAML, then during testing send the fixture data to Pedantic. Pedantic validates the fixture and sends its results back to the caller.

Usage

Display CLI help

docker run prclt/pedantic -h

Basic example caching (RAML/whitelist downloads) by mounting :/tmp as a volume:

docker run --rm --publish 5000:5000 --volume $(pwd)/tmp:/tmp prclt/pedantic https://percolate.com/docs/api/index.raml

curl -X POST -i http://localhost:5000/ --data '{
    "method": "PUT",
    "path_info": "/api/v5/user/user:1",
    "query_string": "required_param=a_string,optional_param=1",
    "status_code": 200,
    "request": {"name": "John Smith"},
    "response": {"data": {"name": "John Smith"}}
}' -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Development

Build image locally

make build

Shell into prclt/pedantic with the repo mounted for development:

make dev

# from there you can run tests:
bin/test
bin/smoke_test