I’ve recently talked about a testing framework called Cypress. In this article I will talk about another one: a pretty simple testing framework for REST API Automation called Karate. In order to best describe it, here’s a pretty descriptive excerpt from the official source:
Karate Framework is the only open-source tool to combine API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed – which is critical for HTTP API testing.
First, let’s compare Karate test with Cucumber and REST-Assured.
Karate:
Cucumber: + we must implement steps and POJO:
Rest-assured:
Advantage of Karate: BDD in one place (compared with Cucumber + steps + business logic + POJOs). If you need complexity Karate has Javascript support for this.
For pre-conditions use, Karate proposes to use another feature files:
Since Karate is written in Java, it has java integration.
Calling Java method from API test, e.x generate uniqueId:
Another advantage of using Karate is its assertion capabilities:
Schema validation. User friendly formating of response validation. Reusing json as a variable. Karate markers. DDT. Similar to Cucumber, but compared to Cucumber, where variables are static in the table, in Karate we can import a csv file with data. Can be user e.x. in boundary testing of api endpoint.
Parallel execution. Running with Junit5. In the example we run all tests/feature files with tag @regression.
Reporting. Allure, Cucumber report. From the box Karate propose the report like next one:
But also we can easily integrate Cucumber report or also Allure 😉
In case of Cucumber Report we can obtain something like:
Some other cool features of Karate Framework: Json Path, UI step-to-step debug, Integration with CI, Build-in ENV switcher, etc.
Summary: Pros and Cons of using Karate Framework:
| pros | cons |
| Integration with java, JS | No ‘find usage’, auto renaming |
| Json, xml native support | TestNG support deprecated |
| Powerful assertion capabilities | Has no Auth Schemes out of the box |
| Parallel execution | |
| No programming skills required |
One Comment
Miguel Angel Apolayo Mendoza
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