REST API – What Is REST API?

Definition:

Application Programming Interface that is what API stands for. API is nothing but the set of rules or agreements that are used to access the functionality provided by a software system.

These are expressed as a list of functions having specific arguments and return values that users can use to access the application functionality.

A significant feature of APIs is that they are often unrestricted, which means that the originator of the API has committed to keep those rules or functions as steady, so other developers can rely on them to build new software.
As now we can relate to what is API, let’s find out how we would test the API’s. Let’s read more this paper for API Testing and its challenges, business benefits, approaches and few best practices.
API- Level testing involves testing specifically if these API rules or functions do what they are supposed to do. It is not a high-level testing where you want to test if a whole application does what it is supposed to do, but to be more specific, it is a piece-wise testing where you check that each individual function of the API works as expected, without being concerned about the “broader picture”.

It is slightly like testing a unit, but it is not a unit testing. Unit testing is done by the development team to ensure that an appropriate unit of software functions as required.  As it’s not black-box testing, it can not exactly reflect the effectiveness of that particular software in the realtime.

To put it candidly, developers very well know their software, so they probably miss out something which may be clear to a tester who isn’t familiarized with the internal working of the software. An API tester’s job is to test the software knowing only what a user is likely to know. As part of a software system, API testing also tests the unit, while unit testing generally tests the unit in relative isolation from the rest of the system.

If we were to ask several testers how to write good application-programming interface (API) tests, you would receive various responses. Peoples styles and approaches are not only different but frequently API sets will contribute themselves to several methodologies.

Thus my goal here is to describe some of the practices that have worked well for me and my team while doing API testing. I hope that the information that I detail here will be beneficial and useful in your own tests.

Introduction:

It is a cloud-based software to automate and accelerate change management planning to stakeholder identification & engagement, change impact assessment, training analysis & design to project communication and mapping users’ training & security requirements. It is primarily used by Change Management Professionals, Project Managers, Instruction Designers and Security Specialists.

As part of setting up, your company’s organizational employee data needs to be loaded into the application, so all the modules in can access it.

Org Data that is loaded is very basic: employee ID, name, email and manager, plus location data. No passwords, personal details, performance or salary details are ever loaded in.

The purpose of this document is to explain how customers can import their Org Data into using our REST API. The REST API takes the place of the Administration Excel import. However, the Excel import will continue to be available for now.

Representational state transfer (REST) is the right choice for building APIs because it allows end users to get connected and interact with cloud services. Now that cloud usage is on the rise, various application programming interfaces (APIs) are emerging to expose Web services.

This document will explain the set-up process, responsibilities, skill sets needed, how to test the REST API implementation and the time you will need to set-up the service.

Overview:

The REST API will allow you to build an application for importing Org Data from your own environment to.

Once built, you can use the REST API to load Org Data and update it on a recurring basis that you set- up.

This will mean that is always working with the latest Org Data to support all the tasks it performs.

● The REST API will allow you to import data into them from a remote environment.

● In future versions, the REST API will be updated to give you additional programmatic access to most of the data in.

Requirements:

● You or a programming resource must know how to write the code that sends your Org Data to the API. We will provide examples in the multiple programming languages that you can adapt to your database structure, to get you quickly up and running.

● You must use the API access key provided by  for every request

What will the REST API provide?

The REST API will return the result of the import as well as any errors encountered during processing of the request.

Benefits:

● Higher performance

● Automated solution

● Support for JSON and XML

● Better security for your Org Data than emailing and uploading spreadsheets from individual computers to

Roles, Responsibilities and Time Requirements

A  resource will provide your access token and technical support.

Time Requirements: 4 Hours

Your company’s technical resource will write and test import application. Example application provided can be quickly modified to work with your database structure.

Time Requirements: 4 Hours

Importing and Updating Org Data

This section provides an overview of the methods in which Org Data can be imported in.  provides two methods to enable you to enact the import:

1.   Manual Org Data Import

This scenario you log into as an Administrator and load /import a formatted Microsoft Excel file into. Validation will ensure that your file is formatted correctly and a review page will enable you to view a report showing any rows that did not import correctly.

This scenario enables you to import your data any time you want but requires you to export your Org Data from your system into the formatted MS Excel file and to make sure the header row is correct before importing.

This scenario does not require the assistance of technical staff to write the code necessary to connect to and upload/import Org Data into. However, you will need your technical staff to set up an automated output file that can be imported into.

2.   Importing and Updating using the REST API

This scenario requires the assistance of technical staff to write the code necessary to connect to the API. The technical staff would write code that connects to your database and queries for the Org Data you want to import to. Then, that data would be sent to the database using the API.

Refer online help for how to complete “Manual Org Data Import”.

Although this scenario requires the use of technical staff to write the solution, it also provides full automation of data flow between your database and the database. The end solution can be scheduled to take place at any time, allowing your data to be continuously synced with.

The next section covers Importing and Updating using the REST API.

Using the REST API

Authentication

The first step is to request an API authentication key from, which needs to be used for every HTTP request made to the API.

Making the import/update request

To import/update employees, you need to make a POST request to

https:\\apps..com\yourcompany\api\v1\employees. All requests need to be made over HTTPS.

If an employee with the same Employee_ID already exists, it will be updated, otherwise a new employee will be created.

The HTTP request headers need to contain:

Content-Type: application/json

Authorization: authentication key provided by

X-Test-Mode: true

The request body should contain an array of employee objects, for example:

[

{

“Employee_ID”: “123”,

“First_Name”: “abc”,

“Last_Name”: “xyz”,

“Title”: “CEO”,

“Email”: “[email protected]“,

“Login_ID”: “abcd”,

“Country”: “USA”,

“Location”: “California”,

“Level1_Mgr_ID”: “100”,

“Level1_Mgr”: “David Watson”,

“Approving_Mgr_ID”: “200”,

“Custom_Field_1”: “Custom value”,

“Custom_Field_2”: “Custom value”,

“Custom_Field_3”: “Custom value”,

“Custom_Field_4”: “Custom value”,

“Custom_Field_5”: “Custom value”,

“Status_Code”: “D”

},

{ … },

{ … },

…

]

Employee Object

Attribute	Type	Max Length
Employee_ID	string	20	required | unique
Last_Name	string	50	required
First_Name	string	50	required
Title	string	125	optional
Email	string	255	optional
Login_ID	string	20	optional
Country	string	125	optional
Location	string	125	optional
Level1_Mgr_ID	string	20	optional
Level1_Mgr	string	125	optional
Approving_Mgr_ID	string	20	optional
Custom Field 1	string	125	optional
Custom Field 2	string	125	optional
Custom Field 3	string	125	optional