Integration testing in Rest API - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Integration Testing for a REST API

📖 Scenario: You are working on a simple REST API that manages a list of books. Each book has a title and an author. You want to make sure that the API works correctly when you add a book and then retrieve the list of books.

🎯 Goal: Build a small integration test that sends a POST request to add a book and then sends a GET request to retrieve the list of books. You will check that the book you added appears in the list.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a test client to interact with the REST API

Send a POST request to add a book with exact title and author

Send a GET request to retrieve the list of books

Check that the response contains the book you added

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Integration testing is used to make sure that different parts of a web API work together correctly before releasing it to users.

💼 Career

Many software development jobs require writing integration tests to ensure APIs behave as expected and to catch bugs early.

1

Setup test client and initial data

Create a variable called test_client that represents the API client. Also create a dictionary called new_book with these exact entries: 'title': 'The Great Gatsby' and 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'.

Rest API

# Create test_client and new_book dictionary
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use APIClient() to create the test client. Define new_book as a dictionary with the exact keys and values.

2

Send POST request to add the book

Use test_client.post to send a POST request to the URL '/books/' with the JSON data new_book. Store the response in a variable called post_response.

Rest API

test_client = APIClient()
new_book = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
# Send POST request and save response
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use test_client.post with the URL '/books/' and pass data=new_book and format='json' to send the book data.

3

Send GET request to retrieve books

Use test_client.get to send a GET request to the URL '/books/'. Store the response in a variable called get_response.

Rest API

test_client = APIClient()
new_book = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
post_response = test_client.post('/books/', data=new_book, format='json')
# Send GET request and save response
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use test_client.get with the URL '/books/' to get the list of books.

4

Check that the added book is in the response

Print the JSON content of get_response and check that it contains the dictionary new_book. Use print(get_response.json()).

Rest API

test_client = APIClient()
new_book = {'title': 'The Great Gatsby', 'author': 'F. Scott Fitzgerald'}
post_response = test_client.post('/books/', data=new_book, format='json')
get_response = test_client.get('/books/')
# Print the JSON response
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(get_response.json()) to see the list of books returned by the API.