Best REST API Tools to Use for Design, Development & Testing

November 23, 2021

Best REST API Tools to Use for Design, Development & Testing

If you’re working on REST APIs and RESTful web services and hunting for some testing tool for testing APIs and web services, or open-source tools to document REST APIs, then you have landed in the right place. This article highlights the best REST API tools that will help Java web developers to test REST APIs.

As Java application testing is crucial for the smooth functioning of the application, these testing tools will help you to test and interact with your REST APIs as you develop for faster tests. So, without any further ado, let’s take a look at the best REST API tools you should be using for design, development, and testing.

List of the Best REST API Tools

As a leading Java software development company, we make use of the REST API tools to interact with your RESTful web services send HTTP GET and POST requests, assess headers and cookies, monitor response code, and inspect data.

Postman

Postman is an API development tool that helps in building, testing and modifying APIs. Developers find every functionality in this tool that is needed for testing. It is used by more than 5 million developers per month to make their API development easy and simple.

No matter whether you’re working on Linux, Windows, Mac OS, you can download the Postman app to test your REST APIs on any platform. It is available as a Chrome extension and you can install it on your Chrome browser. If you’re not fond of command-line tools and prefer a GUI client to test your REST API, then PostMan is the perfect tool for you.

2. RESTAssured

As a Java Software Development Company, we use this tool for automation testing. RESTAssured is a fluent Java library that is used to test HTTP-based REST services. This tool can be integrated with any existing Java-based automation framework. The RestAssured API was built keeping in mind that it can be used by developers who are less expert at HTTP.

The tool provides a behavior-driven development or BDD-like, domain-specific language that makes API testing in Java easy and simple. It also has ready-to-use functionalities so you don’t have to code anything from scratch.

Testing and validating REST services are difficult in Java than in dynamic languages like Ruby and Groovy. This tool brings the simplicity of using those languages into the Java domain.

3. PostWoman

Postwoman is another popular tool on this list of the best REST API tools. With its clean and modern UI, it makes creating API requests fast and easy.

Some of its key features include:

No installation is required as it can run everything online
Compatible with multiple platforms and devices
It can be accessed from anywhere
Customization options

It has earned almost 15K starts on GitHub, which indicates that developers are gaining value from it.

4. Resty

Resty is a command-line tool to test your REST APIs. It is a small script wrapper around the curl that emphasizes REST API testing. You need to simply install this tool and source and you can get started with testing from the command line.

Resty is implemented as functions in your shell so you can combine it with other shell tools such as Perl, grep, awk, sed, etc.

This tool can be used in pipelines to process data from REST services and POST, PATCH, or PUT the data back. Also, you can pipe the data and then edit it in your text editor before the PUT, PATCH, or POST.

5. SoapUI

If your development team has complex API testing scenarios and puts pressure on QA/test engineers, then SoapUI is the right tool to use, especially if you mostly perform API testing.

This is a dedicated REST API testing tool that developers can use. If you need to create custom functionality, you can simply code your solution in SoapUI using Groovy.

6. JMeter

While JMeter was built for load testing, many developers use it for functional API testing. It includes all the functionality required for API testing along with other features that can improve your API testing efforts. For example, it can automatically work with CSV. So, developers can quickly create unique parameter values for your API tests. This tool can also be integrated with Jenkins so you can easily include your API tests in your CI pipelines.

7. Curl

This is one of the most popular REST API tools used by developers. It allows you to send various types of HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE which can be used to test the basic functionalities of your REST APIs.

The tool allows you to set HTTP headers so you can set Content-Type or Accept header to test content negotiation.

Wrapping Up

While these are some of the best REST API tools, there is no perfect tool for all. Every company has different requirements. When it comes to Java application testing, these API test tools are the best picks for you. However, you need to carefully read the descriptions and find which best meets your testing requirements.

As an experienced Java software development company, we feel these are some of the best REST API tools that Java or web developers can use for REST API testing. If you’re looking to hire Java developers for Java software application development and testing, you can count upon our experts at Java India.

FAQs

Q.1. What is JUnit testing in Java?

Ans. JUnit is a popular Java unit testing framework used for regression testing. Testers use this open-source framework to write and run repeatable automated tests.

Q.2. What are the types of Java application testing?

Ans. Here are the common types of Java software application testing: