vREST Introduction | API Testing | Step by Step

What is vREST
Download & setup
Understand GUI
1st Project | 1st Test

What is vREST
Application for REST API Test Automation

Easy to use Interface
Record & Replay
Scriptless assertions
Data-Driven Testing
Reporting
Debugging

CLI
Scheduling
Multi env testing
Integrations - Postman, Swagger, JIRA, TestRail, etc.
Version Control System - Git
CI-CD

Step 1 - Download vREST | Win, Mac, Linux -
Step 2 - Sign up | Login
Step 3 - Explore the GUI
Step 4 - Create new Project | Test Suite
Step 5 - Create 1st Test
Step 6 - Add request, validations
Step 7 - Save & Run

More features…
Data-Driven testing | excel…
Complete JSON & XML validations
Command-line runs
Debugging
Scheduling
Reporting
Version Controlling
CI-CD

#vrest #testing #api

What is GEEK

Buddha Community

How to Do API Testing?

Nowadays API testing is an integral part of testing. There are a lot of tools like postman, insomnia, etc. There are many articles that ask what is API, What is API testing, but the problem is How to do API testing? What I need to validate.

Note: In this article, I am going to use postman assertions for all the examples since it is the most popular tool. But this article is not intended only for the postman tool.

Let’s directly jump to the topic.

Let’s consider you have an API endpoint example http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}} when you send the get request to that URL it returns the JSON response.

My API endpoint is http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/{{username}}

The response is in JSON format like below

JSON

{
  "jobTitle": "string",
  "userid": "string",
  "phoneNumber": "string",
  "password": "string",
  "email": "user@example.com",
  "firstName": "string",
  "lastName": "string",
  "userName": "string",
  "country": "string",
  "region": "string",
  "city": "string",
  "department": "string",
  "userType": 0
}

In the JSON we can see there are properties and associated values.

Now, For example, if we need details of the user with the username ‘ganeshhegde’ we need to send a **GET **request to **http://dzone.com/getuserDetails/ganeshhegde **

Now there are two scenarios.

1. Valid Usecase: User is available in the database and it returns user details with status code 200

2. Invalid Usecase: User is Unavailable/Invalid user in this case it returns status with code 404 with not found message.

#tutorial #performance #api #test automation #api testing #testing and qa #application programming interface #testing as a service #testing tutorial #api test

Public ASX100 APIs: The Essential List

We’ve conducted some initial research into the public APIs of the ASX100 because we regularly have conversations about what others are doing with their APIs and what best practices look like. Being able to point to good local examples and explain what is happening in Australia is a key part of this conversation.

Method

The method used for this initial research was to obtain a list of the ASX100 (as of 18 September 2020). Then work through each company looking at the following:

1. Whether the company had a public API: this was found by googling “[company name] API” and “[company name] API developer” and “[company name] developer portal”. Sometimes the company’s website was navigated or searched.
2. Some data points about the API were noted, such as the URL of the portal/documentation and the method they used to publish the API (portal, documentation, web page).
3. Observations were recorded that piqued the interest of the researchers (you will find these below).
4. Other notes were made to support future research.
5. You will find a summary of the data in the infographic below.

Data

With regards to how the APIs are shared:

• Documentation is where just the Swagger/OpenAPI docs are hosted somewhere. e.g. https://api.linkgroup.com/member/docs/index
• Portal is where an interactive portal has been developed. e.g. https://dev.telstra.com/
• The web page is where the company has a single page that isn’t interactive explaining their Public APIs. e.g. https://www.bendigoadelaide.com.au/banking-products-api.asp

#api #api-development #api-analytics #apis #api-integration #api-testing #api-security #api-gateway

Find the Best Restaurant Mobile App Development Company in Abu Dhbai

The era of mobile app development has completely changed the scenario for businesses in regions like Abu Dhabi. Restaurants and food delivery businesses are experiencing huge benefits via smart business applications. The invention and development of the food ordering app have helped all-scale businesses reach new customers and boost sales and profit. 

As a result, many business owners are searching for the best restaurant mobile app development company in Abu Dhabi. If you are also searching for the same, this article is helpful for you. It will let you know the step-by-step process to hire the right team of restaurant mobile app developers. 

Step-by-Step Process to Find the Best Restaurant App Development Company

Searching for the top mobile app development company in Abu Dhabi? Don't know the best way to search for professionals? Don't panic! Here is the step-by-step process to hire the best professionals. 

#Step 1 – Know the Company's Culture

Knowing the organization's culture is very crucial before finalizing a food ordering app development company in Abu Dhabi. An organization's personality is shaped by its common beliefs, goals, practices, or company culture. So, digging into the company culture reveals the core beliefs of the organization, its objectives, and its development team. 

Now, you might be wondering, how will you identify the company's culture? Well, you can take reference from the following sources – 

• Social media posts 
• App development process
• About us Page
• Client testimonials

#Step 2 - Refer to Clients' Reviews

Another best way to choose the On-demand app development firm for your restaurant business is to refer to the clients' reviews. Reviews are frequently available on the organization's website with a tag of "Reviews" or "Testimonials." It's important to read the reviews as they will help you determine how happy customers are with the company's app development process. 

You can also assess a company's abilities through reviews and customer testimonials. They can let you know if the mobile app developers create a valuable app or not. 

#Step 3 – Analyze the App Development Process

Regardless of the company's size or scope, adhering to the restaurant delivery app development process will ensure the success of your business application. Knowing the processes an app developer follows in designing and producing a top-notch app will help you know the working process. Organizations follow different app development approaches, so getting well-versed in the process is essential before finalizing any mobile app development company. 

#Step 4 – Consider Previous Experience

Besides considering other factors, considering the previous experience of the developers is a must. You can obtain a broad sense of the developer's capacity to assist you in creating a unique mobile application for a restaurant business.

You can also find out if the developers' have contributed to the creation of other successful applications or not. It will help you know the working capacity of a particular developer or organization. Prior experience is essential to evaluating their work. For instance, whether they haven't previously produced an app similar to yours or not. 

#Step 5 – Check for Their Technical Support

As you expect a working and successful restaurant mobile app for your business, checking on this factor is a must. A well-established organization is nothing without a good technical support team. So, ensure whatever restaurant mobile app development company you choose they must be well-equipped with a team of dedicated developers, designers, and testers. 

Strong tech support from your mobile app developers will help you identify new bugs and fix them bugs on time. All this will ensure the application's success. 

#Step 6 – Analyze Design Standards

Besides focusing on an organization's development, testing, and technical support, you should check the design standards. An appealing design is crucial in attracting new users and keeping the existing ones stick to your services. So, spend some time analyzing the design standards of an organization. Now, you might be wondering, how will you do it? Simple! By looking at the organization's portfolio. 

Whether hiring an iPhone app development company or any other, these steps apply to all. So, don't miss these steps. 

#Step 7 – Know Their Location

Finally, the last yet very crucial factor that will not only help you finalize the right person for your restaurant mobile app development but will also decide the mobile app development cost. So, you have to choose the location of the developers wisely, as it is a crucial factor in defining the cost. 

Summing Up!!!

Restaurant mobile applications have taken the food industry to heights none have ever considered. As a result, the demand for restaurant mobile app development companies has risen greatly, which is why businesses find it difficult to finalize the right person. But, we hope that after referring to this article, it will now be easier to hire dedicated developers under the desired budget. So, begin the hiring process now and get a well-craft food ordering app in hand. 

Top 10 API Security Threats Every API Team Should Know

As more and more data is exposed via APIs either as API-first companies or for the explosion of single page apps/JAMStack, API security can no longer be an afterthought. The hard part about APIs is that it provides direct access to large amounts of data while bypassing browser precautions. Instead of worrying about SQL injection and XSS issues, you should be concerned about the bad actor who was able to paginate through all your customer records and their data.

Typical prevention mechanisms like Captchas and browser fingerprinting won’t work since APIs by design need to handle a very large number of API accesses even by a single customer. So where do you start? The first thing is to put yourself in the shoes of a hacker and then instrument your APIs to detect and block common attacks along with unknown unknowns for zero-day exploits. Some of these are on the OWASP Security API list, but not all.

Insecure pagination and resource limits

Most APIs provide access to resources that are lists of entities such as /users or /widgets. A client such as a browser would typically filter and paginate through this list to limit the number items returned to a client like so:

First Call: GET /items?skip=0&take=10 
Second Call: GET /items?skip=10&take=10

However, if that entity has any PII or other information, then a hacker could scrape that endpoint to get a dump of all entities in your database. This could be most dangerous if those entities accidently exposed PII or other sensitive information, but could also be dangerous in providing competitors or others with adoption and usage stats for your business or provide scammers with a way to get large email lists. See how Venmo data was scraped

A naive protection mechanism would be to check the take count and throw an error if greater than 100 or 1000. The problem with this is two-fold:

1. For data APIs, legitimate customers may need to fetch and sync a large number of records such as via cron jobs. Artificially small pagination limits can force your API to be very chatty decreasing overall throughput. Max limits are to ensure memory and scalability requirements are met (and prevent certain DDoS attacks), not to guarantee security.
2. This offers zero protection to a hacker that writes a simple script that sleeps a random delay between repeated accesses.

skip = 0
while True:    response = requests.post('https://api.acmeinc.com/widgets?take=10&skip=' + skip),                      headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer' + ' ' + sys.argv[1]})    print("Fetched 10 items")    sleep(randint(100,1000))    skip += 10

How to secure against pagination attacks

To secure against pagination attacks, you should track how many items of a single resource are accessed within a certain time period for each user or API key rather than just at the request level. By tracking API resource access at the user level, you can block a user or API key once they hit a threshold such as “touched 1,000,000 items in a one hour period”. This is dependent on your API use case and can even be dependent on their subscription with you. Like a Captcha, this can slow down the speed that a hacker can exploit your API, like a Captcha if they have to create a new user account manually to create a new API key.

Insecure API key generation

Most APIs are protected by some sort of API key or JWT (JSON Web Token). This provides a natural way to track and protect your API as API security tools can detect abnormal API behavior and block access to an API key automatically. However, hackers will want to outsmart these mechanisms by generating and using a large pool of API keys from a large number of users just like a web hacker would use a large pool of IP addresses to circumvent DDoS protection.

How to secure against API key pools

The easiest way to secure against these types of attacks is by requiring a human to sign up for your service and generate API keys. Bot traffic can be prevented with things like Captcha and 2-Factor Authentication. Unless there is a legitimate business case, new users who sign up for your service should not have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Instead, only trusted customers should have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Go one step further and ensure any anomaly detection for abnormal behavior is done at the user and account level, not just for each API key.

Accidental key exposure

APIs are used in a way that increases the probability credentials are leaked:

1. APIs are expected to be accessed over indefinite time periods, which increases the probability that a hacker obtains a valid API key that’s not expired. You save that API key in a server environment variable and forget about it. This is a drastic contrast to a user logging into an interactive website where the session expires after a short duration.
2. The consumer of an API has direct access to the credentials such as when debugging via Postman or CURL. It only takes a single developer to accidently copy/pastes the CURL command containing the API key into a public forum like in GitHub Issues or Stack Overflow.
3. API keys are usually bearer tokens without requiring any other identifying information. APIs cannot leverage things like one-time use tokens or 2-factor authentication.

If a key is exposed due to user error, one may think you as the API provider has any blame. However, security is all about reducing surface area and risk. Treat your customer data as if it’s your own and help them by adding guards that prevent accidental key exposure.

How to prevent accidental key exposure

The easiest way to prevent key exposure is by leveraging two tokens rather than one. A refresh token is stored as an environment variable and can only be used to generate short lived access tokens. Unlike the refresh token, these short lived tokens can access the resources, but are time limited such as in hours or days.

The customer will store the refresh token with other API keys. Then your SDK will generate access tokens on SDK init or when the last access token expires. If a CURL command gets pasted into a GitHub issue, then a hacker would need to use it within hours reducing the attack vector (unless it was the actual refresh token which is low probability)

Exposure to DDoS attacks

APIs open up entirely new business models where customers can access your API platform programmatically. However, this can make DDoS protection tricky. Most DDoS protection is designed to absorb and reject a large number of requests from bad actors during DDoS attacks but still need to let the good ones through. This requires fingerprinting the HTTP requests to check against what looks like bot traffic. This is much harder for API products as all traffic looks like bot traffic and is not coming from a browser where things like cookies are present.

Stopping DDoS attacks

The magical part about APIs is almost every access requires an API Key. If a request doesn’t have an API key, you can automatically reject it which is lightweight on your servers (Ensure authentication is short circuited very early before later middleware like request JSON parsing). So then how do you handle authenticated requests? The easiest is to leverage rate limit counters for each API key such as to handle X requests per minute and reject those above the threshold with a 429 HTTP response. There are a variety of algorithms to do this such as leaky bucket and fixed window counters.

Incorrect server security

APIs are no different than web servers when it comes to good server hygiene. Data can be leaked due to misconfigured SSL certificate or allowing non-HTTPS traffic. For modern applications, there is very little reason to accept non-HTTPS requests, but a customer could mistakenly issue a non HTTP request from their application or CURL exposing the API key. APIs do not have the protection of a browser so things like HSTS or redirect to HTTPS offer no protection.

How to ensure proper SSL

Test your SSL implementation over at Qualys SSL Test or similar tool. You should also block all non-HTTP requests which can be done within your load balancer. You should also remove any HTTP headers scrub any error messages that leak implementation details. If your API is used only by your own apps or can only be accessed server-side, then review Authoritative guide to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing for REST APIs

Incorrect caching headers

APIs provide access to dynamic data that’s scoped to each API key. Any caching implementation should have the ability to scope to an API key to prevent cross-pollution. Even if you don’t cache anything in your infrastructure, you could expose your customers to security holes. If a customer with a proxy server was using multiple API keys such as one for development and one for production, then they could see cross-pollinated data.

#api management #api security #api best practices #api providers #security analytics #api management policies #api access tokens #api access #api security risks #api access keys

An API-First Approach For Designing Restful APIs | Hacker Noon

I’ve been working with Restful APIs for some time now and one thing that I love to do is to talk about APIs.

So, today I will show you how to build an API using the API-First approach and Design First with OpenAPI Specification.

First thing first, if you don’t know what’s an API-First approach means, it would be nice you stop reading this and check the blog post that I wrote to the Farfetchs blog where I explain everything that you need to know to start an API using API-First.

Preparing the ground

Before you get your hands dirty, let’s prepare the ground and understand the use case that will be developed.

Tools

If you desire to reproduce the examples that will be shown here, you will need some of those items below.

• NodeJS
• OpenAPI Specification
• Text Editor (I’ll use VSCode)
• Command Line

Use Case

To keep easy to understand, let’s use the Todo List App, it is a very common concept beyond the software development community.

#api #rest-api #openai #api-first-development #api-design #apis #restful-apis #restful-api