30 Days of API Testing Day 12: Share what skills a team needs to succeed with API testing

I thinks some below skills are important:

  • Research skill for finding the best tool combination solutions
  • Scripting skill for API automation testing
  • Know how to use browsers DevTools/Fiddler/Charles to discover what application is calling directly
7 Likes

I have listed some skills required to do API testing in one of my previous post as pre-requisites.

Skills require for API testing

Most importantly, we should understand the business requirement or the business value of each and every operation which we are going to test in that API in order to succeed with API/any kind of testing.

5 Likes

I agree with previous answers. To perform API testing well you need following skills:

  • ability to understand business logic of service and locate real users scenarios,
  • know and understand basic rules of creating good API, how http works, how to creat JSON/XML file,
  • ability to find out how business logic should resolve by API from existing documentation and talk with developers,
  • ability to design tests that are relevant for API,
  • know how to use tools that are good for particular test tasks (Charles, Postman, JMeter, etc.),
  • ability to coding to perform automation API testing,
  • ability to analyze results of tests and how to update existing test suits after API changes.
4 Likes

I perused a number of job listings for API testing and found the following things generally in common:

  • Working knowledge of different types of API’s, obviously
  • All around good testing skills, test plan development, etc.
  • Scripting/programming knowledge in one or more languages
  • Database skills (SQL) came up a lot
  • Exposure to Swagger, Postman, SoapUI or similar, previously mentioned
  • Test Frameworks including BDD
  • Cloud Native Frameworks I saw one job listing asking for: Kubernetes / Docker / Rancher / Consul / Vault / Salt Stack / Jenkins / Terraform / AWS / Jaeger / gRPC / Istio / Calico / Envoy

That’s quite a list!

-Dave K

2 Likes

Skills a team requires to succeed with API testing

Here are some traits that an API testing team should be mastered in:

  • With a view to stay competitive, testers should acquire to be analytical, rational and logical since these traits when implemented while testing aids them to detect errors, perceive the complexities, evaluate the unfamiliar behavior of the application and test them consequently.

  • Social Networking skills are pretty much essential for any expert in any industry. Since social networks offer instant access to content, resources and discussions, honing skills in this area definitely assist software testers to engross with counterparts, acknowledge new things, and stay up-to-date with the latest information.

  • When we speak about programming, it isn’t that testers need to act like a developer, but it is vital to understand the nitty-gritty of the application so that it becomes easy to perceive it’s functioning and build tests accordingly.

1 Like

From the people participating on Twitter:

To succeed with API testing,in my opinion, a team needs skills:

  • Aware of API testing techniques and usage of API tools.
  • Programming skills to understand codes
  • Exploratory testing to research, explore & understand requirement
  • The software lifecycle management skills: understand the application development tasks and plan testing cycles easily.
  • The manual skills: analyses & identify scenario, test suites, test cases
  • Team work
  • Independent Working*
4 Likes

My thought about skills in need to succeed with API testing is the same first 2 ideals of @oceannguyen. Besides, I think exploring the product, learning and adaptability are also important and necessary.

4 Likes

I think the skills as below will useful:

  • Understand the purpose of API, the input/output, the workflow of the application, the features and functions, the business logic …

  • Understand the basic knowledge about API, ex: the method, request, response …

  • Able to create test scenario, test cases, test suites

  • Research skill

  • Scripting skill

4 Likes

I think to succeed with the API testing the team should has:

  • Research skill.
  • Exploratory testing skill.
  • Automation skill.
  • Document skill.
6 Likes

I thinks some below skills are important with the API testing the team:

  • Research skills for finding the Ideas/Solution/Best Practices/Tools.

  • Exploratory testing skill to learnt more about the unknown of API business roles and logics.

  • Know how to use browsers DevTools/Fiddler/Charles to discover what application is calling directly.

  • Final is * Automation skill for API automation testing(any languages dependent your project)

2 Likes

@heather_reid - Lots of good points here. I think that “basic” knowledge about encryption might be important too. But, I don’t know what are the basics & how to learn them. So, I asked a question about encryption over here (link) . Could you please help me to get more attention on that question? thank you.

2 Likes

This would be the list for my point

  1. Communication - If there is a good communication in the team then the tester will be able to know as much as possible about the API. All the questions will be answered :slight_smile:
  2. Documentation skills - Together with a good communciation we should have a good documentation of the API, I recommend Swagger since it is a basically a living documentation
  3. Scripting - I put this as the last part because if you do not know the first 2 then no amount of scripts in the world will let you really test the API.
2 Likes

Thank you everyone! My contribution is this visual summary of your answers

2 Likes

@m.zn can I borrow this mindmap to share it in testing group I’m in?

I would add something like Authorization & Authentication, knowledge of stuff like JWT etc
Very nice map though!

2 Likes

Sure, feel free to use it. Here is the link to other Xmind mindmps.

2 Likes