logo

Build and scale with confidence

API testing - concepts in depth

Jan 18, 2024, 2:21 PM:  ~ 5 min read

API testing - concepts in depth

Article based on real life feedback. So, challenge accepted!

You should maybe start with a simple example of what API is, like a restaurant - customer, waiter and the cook

The restaurant

  • Is the bit of code that does some logic. But maybe I'll have to go back a few steps because there is some context missing. Before the payload (the information) gets to an API there are some systems which can get a little bit of attention. There is the network (internet or same computer, doesn’t matter, but there is something in between). But between the network and the code there is a server. The server’s responsibility is to accept connections and then based on ...

API testing - Intro

Jan 6, 2024, 2:21 PM:  ~ 7 min read

How APIs work and what they are:

They are some pieces of code accessible publicly in various ways, that try to apply the logic over the what’s given to them.

  • What’s sent is called a payload.
  • What’s returned is called a response.
  • The payload sent in the url can be generically called url parameter.
  • The receiver of the payload is called endpoint.

Thank you for reading the TL;DR section. From here on we will go in-depth on how to debug them and how to think about testing APIs.

How to think:

APIs are not only things over the internet accessible through URLs. API refers to any collection of standardized names that when called do something. For example the API of ...

Selectors / locators - Deep dive

Jan 4, 2024, 2:21 PM:  ~ 8 min read

Siblings, parents, ancestors, madness

  • Imagine the web page like a city with adjacent buildings of different heights. The street is <html> tag. The buildings are <head>,<body> etc.
  • Now imagine you are an apartment. So apartment == element.
  • Sibling elements are the same floor apartments.
  • The parent element is the flat itself. Because it holds you inside it.
  • The street is your ancestor because it holds your parent, the flat. The ancestor can be as far away as you want it to be.
  • Relative to you, the child elements are the rooms. Because they are inside you.
  • These names apply for both CSS and XPath. They are concepts.
  • Sorry, there is no madness, but t ...

Selectors / locators - why are they important?

Jan 3, 2024, 2:21 PM:  ~ 10 min read

How selectors work and what are they

  • Selectors (or locators) are only some pieces of text that help us identify something in a document. How they look like, the syntax, is an agreement between the creator of structure and the user.
  • I use the word structure instead of document or web page because selectors work for anything. Heck, technically even Regex (Regular expressions) can be considered as selectors up to a point. There are JSON selectors, DB selectors etc, apps structure, excel documents structure etc.
  • There is a bit of software called an interpreter which is coded to understand the text of selectors and return some parts of the structure accordingly.
  • Same s ...

Learn the craft, not the tool. Your knowledge is your power. Your knowledge makes you irreplaceable. Memorizing stuff makes you equal to a google search or a chat bot.

Got any questions? Contact or read more about us.
You can also read our blog, or check out our our YouTube channel.