Automating API testing just got easier

SmartBear released a new update to SoapUI Pro, an automated API testing tool. SoapUI Pro 2.4 provides a new native Jenkins plugin for easy integration with the popular CI/CD tool and has enhanced the API Discovery capability to convert API traffic to automated API tests.

As organizations move to shift their testing into earlier development phases and adopt Agile practices that incorporate continuous testing, it's necessary to drastically increase Unit and API testing in the development process to ensure robust test coverage across the application and remove flakiness that often plagues tests at the UI level. Previously, conducting large-scale API testing has been hampered by silos between development and testing teams and the requirement for deep technical skills when working with APIs. The enhanced API Discovery capabilities in SoapUI Pro 2.4 solves this problem by allowing testers of any skill level to create advanced API test cases by instantly converting API traffic into full-blown automated API tests. With the addition of the new native Jenkins plugin, which complements the command-line interface for integrating with other CI infrastructure, like TeamCity or Bamboo, SoapUI Pro 2.4 saves hours of time deploying builds. Teams can now select their SoapUI Pro testing suite as a Jenkins Build Step, reducing time spent copying and running commands in a batch execution file like most API testing tools.

“The new API Discovery capability in SoapUI Pro can help bridge the gap between QA and development teams giving QA team members a fast lane to begin testing their REST and SOAP API calls and introducing quality earlier in the development process,” said Christian Wright, EVP and GM, API Business at SmartBear.

The enhanced API Discovery feature in SoapUI Pro complements its already powerful one-click test creation, which uses out-of-the-box assertions to help testers generate complex functional, load, or security API tests with no coding knowledge required. The API Discovery happens inside an internal browser or across a proxy, listening for API calls that are happening beneath the UI layer and then converting those calls into automated API tests. This method of API test creation helps connect the UI and API layers in the testing phase, allowing for the larger adoption of API test automation across an organization.

This update also adds support for JSON Web Token (JWT), a common open source method for creating access tokens, as well as support for RAML 1.0 for legacy APIs that haven't yet been converted to the OpenAPI Specification.