I'm writing some API definitions with apiary/api blueprint.
Is there a way that, for the same resource, I can use the mock endpoint to behave differently depending on input (or failing that, some kind of work around)?
For example, say I have an endpoint /login, to which you are supposed to post a username and password.
If I set up a request and response in the API that successfully logs me in, and subsequent requests and response that are error scenarios, only the first one gets triggered in the mock.
So for example, if I don't send in a username and password, I still get the logged in successfully response.
Is there any way to get the mock to do more validation or how do you work around this?
Thanks
Yes, it is possible and thoroughly described in the documentation. See http://support.apiary.io/knowledgebase/articles/117119-handling-multiple-actions-on-a-single-resource
That feature is not implemented yet, but is being worked on. Have a look at MSON, please.
Related
I'm in the process of writing a testing framework for an application, and I am not allowed to update, delete, move, or basically do anything with the data used by this application. For GET requests I need to test this is no problem, but PUT, POST and DELETE methods that change data this obviously is not the case.
Is there any way to send a POST request without any body, and still get a response that shows the url can take a request? Or in other words, how can I show that a url that is a POST is up and able to take requests, without actually sending the POST request and changing something in the database? (unfortunately its not possible to add a test object to database and run requests on that).
I need to do this programmatically in either Java or C# as well.
There is no general way to 'test' if a POST request will work.
Most servers will likely emit a 400 error for these endpoints, which doesn't tell you a lot.
The most standard way to see if something is able to accept a POST request at all, is probably by doing an OPTIONS request and using the Allow header in the response to get the list of supported methods.
There is no guarantee that this is going to be correct, but many modern frameworks do a decent job populating this list. This is likely going to give you the most accurate, but still imperfect results.
You should not send an empty POST request anywhere because it could have a meaning and you could make unexpected changes to a server. For this kind of introspection stuff, stick to the 'safe' methods.
We’re trying to implement a Wopi Host following the protocol to integrate with OWA, as documented in here, and we’re having some issues with some points:
We have implemented a simple host that is only capable of viewing files, that is, it implements the CheckFileInfo and GetFile views. In a test environment, the flow is working and we’re able to view the files in OWA. The point is, when executing the Wopi Validator (the web and the docker version), we’re having an error in the GetFile operation because the validator is trying to access the endpoint with two // at the end:
host/wopi/files/file_id//contents
Is this a known issue that is happening only in the validator? Why are the two ‘/’ being appended to the end of the WopiSrc? How can we address this issue?
We have read some posts here stating that the editing is required in order to officially validate our OWA integration with Microsoft. Is this true? Isn’t the CheckFileInfo and GetFile views the only ones necessary to implement a simple Wopi host capable only of viewing files? We’re just passing the required information in the response of the CheckFileInfo operation. We’re not using FileUrl or any other parameter but the required ones. As far as I can see, these two views are the only one required for viewing files with OWA, such as stated here
Additionally, we’re having an issue in the first part of the flow, when the browser sends a request to OWA and passes the token and the WopiSrc. We were only able to make the flow work passing the token in the query string via the GET method. If we put it under a JSON with a POST method, the OWA simply ignores it and does not make an attempt to call the Wopi Host at all, via the WopiSrc. Could someone enlighten us a bit on this matter to figure out what may be happening?
Furthermore, we’re stuck in some point of token validation. The docs are crystal clear when they say that the token is generated by the host, and that it should be unique for a single user/file combination. We have done that. The problem is, how are we supposed to know what is the user that is trying to access a resource, when the request comes from OWA? For example, when the OWA calls the host in the CheckFileInfo and GetFile views, it passes us the token. But how could we know the user information as well? Since the token is for a single file (which we have in the address of the endpoint being accessed) and for a single user, how can we validate the user at this point? We have not found any header or placeholder value that could be used to extract this information when receiving a request from OWA, and we’re a bit lost here. We’ve thought about appending the user information to the token, and then extracting it back, but for what I could see, doing that I’m only ensuring that the token has not been modified between requests. Does anyone have any idea?
Regarding the validation with Microsfot demands the edit functionality.
For the POST situation, the submission must be made as a "form" not as JSON.
The token validation is completely open, you must choose the way you think would be the best approach. JWT is a good alternative in this case.
We are trying to set up an api interface between two web-applications. When testing the GET call, it works from PostMan while not working from soapUI. The web-apps seems to be failing like soapUI.
I am hoping that if we can identify and understand the difference, we can resolve the issue.
Some info:
Both use Basic Authentication with a username and password (they both seem to be allowed access, as authenticated POST calls work from both testing tools).
From neither of the tools do we pass any parameter explicitly. It's a static URL we are calling to. However, the URL does include a resource-id (a target report) that could be set up as a template parameter if we wanted to.
When making the call from soapUI, the log on the application that is supposed to respond to the GET says javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:"", local:"reportExecution").
The call we use is something like GET [endpoint]/jasperserver-pro/rest_v2/reportExecutions/0cc3aefc-29b6-45b1-8248-ae4e1457bb87/status
Update: By now I am quite sure this has to do with cookies. The request id 0cc3aefc-29b6-45b1-8248-ae4e1457bb87 above was received in a previous call and you need to to request the status with the same access token, which you can do with Cookies, but setting that up in soapUI is no simple matter (at least not for me). In PostMan this seems to be the standard behaviour, and hence the difference in result.
Best regards
Pieka
I use an authentication service Auth0 to allow users to log into my application. The application is a Q&A platform much like stackoverflow. I store a user profile on my server with information such as: 'about me', votes, preferences, etc.
When new user signs in i need to do 1 of 2 things:
For an existing user - retrieve the user profile from my api server
For a new user - create a new profile on the database
After the user signs in, Auth0(the authentication service) will send me some details(unique id, name and email) about the user but it does not indicate whether this is a new user(a sign up) or a existing user(a sign in).
This is not a complex problem but it would be good to understand best practice. I can think of 2 less than ideal ways to deal with this:
**Solution 1 - GET request **
Send a get request to api server passing the unique id
If a record is found return it
Else create new profile on db and return the new profile
This seems incorrect because the GET request should not be writing to the server.
**Solution 2 - One GET and a conditional POST request **
Send a get request to api server passing the unique id
The server checks the db and returns the profile or an error message
If the api server returns an error message send a post request to create a new profile
Else redirect to the home page
This seems inefficient because we need 2 requests to achieve a simple result.
Can anyone shed some light on what's best practice?
There's an extra option. You can use a rule in Auth0 to send a POST to the /users/create endpoint in your API server when it's the first time the user is logging in, assuming both the user database in Auth0 and in your app are up-to-date.
It would look something like this:
[...]
var loginCount = context.stats.loginsCount;
if (loginCount == 1) {
// send POST to your API and create the user
// most likely you'll want to await for response before moving on with the login flow
}
[...]
If, on the other hand, you're referring to proper API design and how to implement a find-or-create endpoint that's RESTful, maybe this answer is useful.
There seems to be a bit of disagreement on the best approach and some interesting subtleties as discussed in this post: REST Lazy Reference Create GET or POST?
Please read the entire post but I lean towards #Cormac Mulhall and #Blake Mitchell answers:
The client wants the current state of the resource from the server. It is not aware this might mean creating a resource and it does not care one jolt that this is the first time anyone has attempted to get this resource before, nor that the server has to create the resource on its end.
The following quote from The RESTful cookbook provided by #Blake Mitchell makes a subtle distinction which also supports Mulhall's view:
What are idempotent and/or safe methods?
Safe methods are HTTP methods that do not modify resources. For instance, using GET or HEAD on a resource URL, should NEVER change the resource. However, this is not completely true. It means: it won't change the resource representation. It is still possible, that safe methods do change things on a server or resource, but this should not reflect in a different representation.
Finally this key distinction is made in Section 9.1.1 of the HTTP specification:
Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not
generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in
fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important
distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects,
so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.
Going back to the initial question, the above seems to support Solution 1 which is to create the profile on the server if it does not already exist.
What should be the standard approach for getting user information after login ?
POST request to validate user/password and retrieve information on response
POST request to validate user/password followed by GET request to retrieve information?
As far as I understand, GET should be the preferred one to retrieve data, but it seems burdensome to performe two requests; at the same time, it feels weird to get data back on POST response. Which should be preferred?
My 2 cents:) if you really want to follow REST Paradigm then you should use standard http method as GET. Although an overloaded POST might do the job however it’s not following the standard.
In SOAP world everything is POST and you can do a lot of funky stuff however in REST world there is a standard on what method used for what purpose ideally.