Going POSTal! Discover WebAPI Testing in QF-Test
In this webinar, we will give a brief introduction to web accessibility and present the new accessibility testing features of QF-Test.
QF‑Test 10 expands our proven test automation tool with completely redesigned tools for testing web interfaces. QF‑Test thus offers comprehensive capabilities not only for UI test automation, but also for automated testing of web services.
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What is Web API Testing?
Web APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are interfaces that enable the exchange of data and functions between different software components via the internet or a network. They form the basis of modern, distributed systems and are often provided as REST, SOAP or high-level API architectures such as GraphQL.
Web API testing refers to the verification and validation of such interfaces to ensure that they function reliably, correctly, securely and performantly – regardless of the user interface. This involves automatically sending HTTP requests, analysing responses and validating data formats such as JSON or XML.
Since web APIs are a central component of many applications, their error-free interaction is crucial for the stability and quality of digital products. Automated API testing helps to detect errors early on, make development more efficient, and lay the foundation for continuous integration and agile working methods.
Why is automated web API testing so important? – Benefits and advantages for your company
Automated web API testing plays a central role in quality assurance for modern, distributed software systems. APIs are the backbone of communication between applications, microservices and cloud services – their reliability and security have a direct impact on your entire product.
By using automated API testing, you benefit from numerous advantages:
- Early error detection: Errors are detected immediately after each code change and can therefore be quickly corrected during the development process.
- Efficiency and time savings: Automatic tests run without manual intervention, significantly speeding up feedback cycles and reducing testing effort.
- Repeatability and scalability: The same test scenarios can be run as often as required and at any time, even with a growing number of endpoints.
- Ensuring functionality: API tests reliably check whether interfaces are working as expected – regardless of front end or back end.
- Integration into CI/CD: Automated API tests are optimally integrated into continuous integration and continuous deployment, enabling continuous quality control.
- Increased security and compliance: Security checks can be specifically integrated to identify vulnerabilities at an early stage.
Automated API testing allows you to reliably ensure the quality of your APIs, minimise risks and lay the foundation for stable, powerful and future-proof software.
Typical use cases
QF-Test allows you to test a wide variety of API scenarios flexibly and efficiently:
- Microservices architectures: Verify individual services and interfaces in a network.
- End-to-end testing: Test complete data transfers between front-end and back-end systems.
- Performance and load testing: Ensure the scalability and resilience of your APIs.
- Automated regression testing: Repeatable checks for new releases to rule out regressions.
- Security and penetration testing: Checks against the most important API security risks according to OWASP API Top 10.
API testing with QF-Test brings transparency, efficiency and security to your interface landscape.
Challenges in testing web APIs
API testing can be challenging, especially in complex, modern software landscapes. Typical challenges include:
- Diversity of interfaces: REST, SOAP, GraphQL – every API works differently.
- Parameter and authentication management: APIs often require complex headers, tokens, OAuth mechanisms or API keys.
- Test data and formats: APIs process a wide variety of data structures such as JSON or XML, which must be processed correctly.
- Versioning and compatibility: APIs continue to evolve – tests must be able to respond flexibly to new versions.
- Performance and scalability: Not only must the function be correct, but load capacity and response time are also critical.
With QF-Test, you can overcome these challenges efficiently and reliably.
How Web API testing works with QF-Test
Thanks to the visual user interface, successfully testing web APIs with QF-Test is not difficult.
Thanks to the visual user interface, successfully testing web APIs with QF-Test is not difficult.
Step-by-step instructions
- Create a ‘Web Request’ node: Enter the URL to be tested and configure the desired request type (e.g.
GET,POST,PUT).
- Set parameters and authentication: Configure headers, body, parameters, and expected response status code.
- Create “Request Credentials” node for authentication: If necessary, you can store authentication details such as API keys, BasicAuth or bearer tokens here.
- Create ‘Request Settings’ node for advanced configuration: For even more control over the execution of the request, you will find advanced options here, e.g. for cookies and proxies.
- Incorporate test data: Use dynamic variables and external data sources for realistic tests.
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Validate responses: Use the ‘Post Request Handler’ node to validate the server’s response via our intuitive WebAPI Scripting API.
![Assert.test(qw.response.headers["Content-Type"].contains("image/png"), "Checking the response header for a content type of an image")](/images/screenshots/qftest-webapi-scripting.png)
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Automate and integrate tests: Add your tests to existing CI/CD pipelines and receive detailed reports in HTML and XML format.
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What sets QF-Test WebAPI testing apart?
The WebAPI testing capability in QF-Test is built securely on the standard Java JDK java.net.http package, offering high performance and reliability. Here is what makes the implementation particularly powerful:
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Visual Test Configuration: You don’t need to be a developer to write standard API tests. The Web request node provides a clear graphical user interface to define HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.), endpoints, headers, and payload structures.
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Hierarchical Request Handlers: QF-Test uses Pre-request handler and Post-request handler nodes. These allow you to apply configurations, like authentication, proxy settings, or custom headers, and validation logic globally, to a specific test case, or to a single request.
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Comprehensive Run Logs and Reporting: Test reports automatically capture detailed request and response data (including headers and bodies) and log them cleanly within HTML reports. A convenient “Copy” button in the Run Log lets you instantly extract large JSON responses for debugging or external validation.
Natural Language Assertions
Verifying API responses should be as straightforward as reading them. To complement the WebAPI nodes, QF-Test includes a powerful Assertions module that enables Natural Language Assertions.
Instead of writing convoluted, hard-to-read validation logic, you can use readable, chainable assertion statements within your Server scripts (using Groovy) to check status codes, headers, and specific JSON/XML body values.
Not only does this make your test cases highly readable for both developers and QA engineers, but it also provides highly flexible error handling. If a specific check fails, the natural language assertion can simply log the failure cleanly in the HTML report without immediately halting the entire test execution, acting as a “soft assertion”. This allows you to gather a complete picture of an endpoint’s health and data accuracy in a single run.
WebAPI – Your advantage with QF-Test
WebAPI is the name we give to the suite of functions in QF-Test that allow you to easily create powerful automated API tests.
Combination of web API tests and UI tests
High-level test automation and web API testing in one tool.
Support for all relevant protocols
REST, SOAP, GraphQL and other standards.
Visual test case creation
User-friendly interface and optional WebAPI scripting API for complex scenarios.
Parameterisation and test data management
Flexible working with variables, dynamic values and test data generators.
Seamless CI/CD integration
Connection to tools such as Jenkins, GitLab or Azure DevOps.
Detailed reports and analyses
Detect errors immediately, evaluate test coverage.
Secure testing
Support for SSL, authentication, encryption, and security checks.
Extensible test environment
Also ideal for complex, company-specific requirements.
Automatic Postman migration
Automatic conversion of Postman collections to QF-Test test suites
Immediate support
for downloads, uploads, error handling and retries.
Full control with on-premise solution
All tests run on your own infrastructure—no Software as a Service (SaaS), no cloud dependency.
Documentation and learning materials
Our manual, tutorial and sample suites explain all aspects of QF-Test in a clear and detailed manner.
Mastering Web API Testing with QF-Test: Secure, On-Premise and Integrated
The complexity of modern applications means that testing the graphical user interface (GUI) alone is no longer sufficient. Reliable software quality assurance must validate both the visual components and the underlying API services. With the introduction of dedicated WebAPI features, QF-Test provides a comprehensive approach to testing HTTP-based web services like REST directly within your existing test automation workflows.
Whether you are aiming to combine API and UI testing or looking for a secure, on-premise alternative to cloud-only platforms, QF-Test offers a robust, technically profound solution.
Keeping Data Secure: The On-Premise Advantage
Data sovereignty and strict compliance requirements are paramount, particularly within the European market and for sensitive sectors like healthcare, finance, and government.
Recently, tools like Postman have enforced mandatory cloud synchronization, making them unviable for teams that handle highly confidential data or operate in air-gapped environments. QF-Test runs strictly on-premise. Your test data, API schemas, and proprietary backend logic never leave your company’s network unless you explicitly configure them to.
Seamless Postman Migration
For teams seeking to transition away from cloud-dependent If you wish to migrate your existing web API tests from another tool to QF-Test, get in touch and we will assist you individually., QF-Test provides a built-in Postman Migration feature. Through “Extras” > “Convert Postman collection”, you can automatically convert existing Postman collections into QF-Test test suites. The import preserves your collection’s structure and HTTP requests, allowing your team to resume testing securely and efficiently without having to rebuild everything from scratch.
True End-to-End (E2E) Test Integration
One of the main limitations of standalone API testing tools is the disconnect between the API layer and the user interface layer. With QF-Test, web API testing is natively integrated into your overall testing infrastructure. This enables complex, true End-to-End (E2E) scenarios. For instance, you can use a single QF-Test test suite to:
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Make a web API call to set up database records or initialize a complex test state.
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Drive the application’s UI via browser or desktop automation to interact with the newly created state.
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Send a follow-up API request to validate that the backend correctly processed the UI inputs.
Using standard QF-Test Dependencies, you can enforce reliable setup, cleanup, and error-handling steps across both API and UI interactions.
Case studies – these customers trust QF-Test
Automated UI testing is used in many areas – ideal for agile teams and continuous quality control:
Looking ahead: Features currently in progress
We are continuously expanding QF-Test’s API testing capabilities to meet evolving development standards. Our engineering team is currently working on several advanced features, including:
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OpenAPI Import & Automatic Test Creation: Soon, you will be able to import OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications directly. QF-Test will support referenced schemas and automatically generate test cases, intelligently populating requests and test validations with the respective data types.
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Multipart and Form-Data GUI Support: A dedicated visual interface for easily configuring request bodies as multipart/form-data, greatly simplifying tests that require file uploads alongside text inputs.
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GraphQL Support: Dedicated tooling and nodes to efficiently query and mutate data against GraphQL endpoints.
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Advanced WebRequest Settings: Expanded built-in nodes to configure common headers and variables, further minimizing the need for custom scripts in routine API calls.
The QF-Test WebAPI Testing Suite – Your solution
API testing doesn’t need to be isolated from your UI automation, nor should it force you to compromise on your company’s strict security policies. By bridging the gap between graphical end-to-end tests and backend service validation, QF-Test provides a unified, deeply integrated, and entirely on-premise testing environment.
Explore the WebAPI documentation to learn more about setting up your first WebAPI test and leveraging the full potential of integrated test automation.
QF-Test offers a modern, powerful toolset for automated web API testing – flexible, scalable and easy to use.
- QF-Test is a test automation tool that supports UI testing as well as the automation and testing of web services and APIs.
- It enables both integration testing of APIs (e.g. REST and SOAP) and combination with UI testing to implement end-to-end scenarios.
- Thanks to its user-friendly interface and scripting capabilities, it is particularly suitable for implementing complex test scenarios.
Compared to other testing tools, QF-Test scores particularly well in terms of stability, ease of use and excellent support. This makes QF-Test the ideal choice for teams who want to implement professional test automation efficiently and sustainably.
Methods of automated API testing
Automated API testing encompasses various types of tests that differ in their objectives and approaches. Depending on the application scenario, they ensure that interfaces function reliably, securely and efficiently:
Security tests
Identify and prevent typical attack patterns such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS) or unauthorised access to protected data.
Fault tolerance tests
Check how robust the API is in response to invalid inputs, network problems or error situations, and whether it processes the corresponding error messages correctly.
The targeted use of these methods gives you transparency and control over your interfaces, increases software quality and enables reliable, continuous further development of your applications.
