Writing unit tests in Ruby for a REST API

Question

I've written a basic REST API using sinatra.

Does anyone know the best way to write tests for it? I would like to do so using Ruby.

I've done my initial testing using curl. But I'd like to do something more robust. This is my first API - is there anything specific I should be testing?

Answer 1

The best way is a matter of opinion :) Personally, I like simple and clean. With tools like minitest, Watir and rest-client, you can put together a very simple test of both your REST interface as well as testing your web service through actual browsers (all major browsers are supported).

#!/usr/bin/ruby
#
# Requires that you have installed the following gem packages: 
# json, minitest, watir, watir-webdrive, rest-client
# To use Chrome, you need to install chromedriver on your path

require 'rubygems'
require 'rest-client'  
require 'json'
require 'pp'
require 'minitest/autorun'
require 'watir'
require 'watir-webdriver'

class TestReportSystem < MiniTest::Unit::TestCase
   def setup
      @browser = Watir::Browser.new :chrome # Defaults to firefox. Can do Safari and IE too.
      # Log in here.....
   end

   def teardown
      @browser.close
   end

   def test_report_lists   # For minitest, the method names need to start with test
      response = RestClient.get 'http://localhost:8080/reporter/reports/getReportList'
      assert_equal response.code,200
      parsed = JSON.parse response.to_str
      assert_equal parsed.length, 3 # There are 3 reports available on the test server
   end

   def test_on_browser
      @browser.goto 'http://localhost:8080/reporter/exampleReport/simple/genReport?month=Aug&year=2012'
      assert(@browser.text.include?('Report for Aug 2012'))
   end
end

Run the test cases by simply executing the script. There are many other testing systems and REST clients for Ruby which can be put to work in a similar way.