Problems in existing API Testing Tools. Are these problems real? | Hacker News Reader

Problems in existing API Testing Tools. Are these problems real?

2 pointsaishwarydhare13 comments

Hello, I have been developing a no-code API testing tool for last 6 months to solve some really painful problems I felt in API Testing. Please give me your honest and toughest feedback.

The problems I felt are -

1. There are a lot of tools, but none of them covers all the aspects of API Testing i.e. Functional (hit-n-trial), assertions, scenario (flow of APIs) and load testing 2. Because of lots of tools, its redundante to do configurations in each tool seperately when there are changes in APIs 3. All different tools requires us to go through a new learning curve to understand their usage, GUI, terminology and configuration options 4. JMeter has a complicated UI in comparison with Postman, which in 2021 looks to be more complicated then it needs to be 5. For scenario testing (flow of APIs) or assertion testing of APIs in Postman, you need to learn and write JavaScript 6. Devs use postman during development. They just test if APIs are working, but they don't test how their APIs will behave under load, and how the host machine's resources are being utilised with their API. I think the only reason for this is because JMeter looks more complicated and ancient than Postman. And its very time consuming to run multiple apps, do configurations, then run tests. 7. Since we use a lot of ORMs like Django-ORM, Mongoose, Sqlalchemy and tools/libraries these days, it is hard to understand what is running under the hood hence its hard to debug. Developers spent a lot of time tracking what stored and loaded in database. There should be a single unified monitor to debug all these info (just like an APM) 8. Because no single tool covers all needs, there is need to purchase licenses of multiple tools. Breaking the whole API testing scene even more broken 9. Devs can write better code if they themselves test and monitor how their APIs are performing under load

Postman is the real player in this space. They did a great job collecting the low hanging fruit in terms of engaging all types of users in working with APIs. They've been a bit slow since then to build out their full API design and verification functionality, but they are making steady progress, and it seems like UI in 8.0 cleans up a lot of the rough edges they've accumulated over the years.

They also make it simple, if not necessarily easy, to use your collections in other places, either through Newman, API access, or direct export. I know Blazemeter, for example, allows you to build load tests from Postman collections, and it's relatively trivial to have Newman running as part of your CI.

So having worked in this space for the past two decades, and quite recently felt a lot of those same pain points, I'm skeptical of any solution that doesn't either challenge Postman head-on, or build around it.

Without significant financial backing, it will be very difficult to get traction otherwise. That said, I'll certainly take a look at your project, should you share it.

Nice, thanks for the insight. You can find more details on the product, its roadmap and its MVP release on https://zuqa.io

And actually, its just an MVP right now, so not completly intuitive. I'd love to give you a demo and note your feedback. Can we connect on LinkedIn or somewhere? I am new on hackernoon, don't understand it completely .

We can schedule through this: https://calendly.com/aishwarydhare/zuqa-product-demo-and-fee...

Neat, I've got time, so I booked us a spot. :)

That's great idea! Test tool chain is every time complex. Do you have URL to the product?

I feedback just from your concept, it maybe setting management is remain if setup is easy without code, and you point out white box test needs like ORM, it maybe friendly with code. But less boiler plate test code is great thing I think.

Hi, yes I have put up all details, release links and product roadmap on https://zuqa.io

Would you be interested in a short demo, I'd love to take your feedbacks. Can we connect on LinkedIn or somewhere? I am new on HackerNoon, don't understand it completely yet.

We can schedule through this - https://calendly.com/aishwarydhare/zuqa-product-demo-and-fee...

Thank you for link, I installed nodejs version. I tried top request panel and flow. API call panel is useful, but cannot run flow. How about video just record screen? GUI is hard at first time. recognize each buttons are what mean.

Yes the current MVP is just invented with a lot of opensource projects, we are working on proper beta right now with making whole thing intuitive. I'll like here link to a recording as well.

But It would be great if I can give you a demo, 8 min demo, 5 min discussions ~ 15 min :)

Each tool has its upsides and downsides. There's no one to rule them all. For me setup with Postman and k6 works good enough. Still not perfect but good enough.

For real load tests you should replicate real traffic with something like wrk.

Load testing is a part of the upcoming feature of zuQA. For this I compared a lot of load testing tools and finally decided to use vegeta.

Also would you like a demo of my product https://zuqa.io , can we connect on LinkedIn or somewhere?

We can schedule through this - https://calendly.com/aishwarydhare/zuqa-product-demo-and-fee...

Checkout this short comic I created about this issue on imgur - https://i.imgur.com/ikWcD2m.jpg

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