I was studying examples of how I can validate the data returned from a human services APIs demo, and develop a set of API tests, as well as API service providers who can implement the tests, for cities to consider as part of their API deployments that are serving up locations and organizations where you can find critical services. I'm looking for examples of the common things like API availability and response time, but I'm also looking to get very granular and specialized to organizational, location, and service APIs.
The image I borrowed from RunScope helps visualize what I'm talking about, showing us how we can keep an eye on the basics, but also getting really granular when specifying what we expect from of our APIs. I have a pretty good imagination when it comes to thinking of scenarios I want to test for, but I'm also looking for any API providers who might be already sharing their tests and being more transparent when it comes to their API monitoring and testing practices. If you know of any API providers that would be willing to share the lists of what types of things they test for, I'd love to hear more.
I'm thinking a regular blog series on different examples of how people are testing APIs from a diverse range of business sectors might help stimulate people's imagination when it comes to API testing concepts. I'm thinking it is another area that we could all learn a lot from each other if there was just a little bit of sharing. I'd love it if the examples were machine readable and reusable in any API testing service, but I would settle for just a blog post, or sharing of a bulleted list of API tests via email, or another channel. ;-)
