Overview

Apidog provides a full suite of features designed to make API debugging straightforward and efficient, leveraging API specifications to streamline the testing and development process. Below is an overview of the key debugging features that Apidog offers.

Automatically Generate Requests for Debugging

Apidog automates the creation of request parameters and bodies based on your API specifications, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of the debugging process.

• Generate request params/body based on API spec: Automatically creates request parameters and bodies as defined in your API specification, ensuring precision and saving time during testing.
• Generate realistic data with dynamic values: Injects realistic and dynamic values into your requests, simulating real-world scenarios and helping identify potential issues in handling data variations.
• Save requests as endpoint cases: Allows you to save configurations of request parameters and bodies as endpoint cases which can be reused, making regression testing and repeated tests more efficient.

Automated Visual Testing Made Easy

With Apidog, you can visually test your API responses without manual setup, guaranteeing that your API behaves as expected across different scenarios.

• Automated response validation: Validates API responses automatically against your API specification, catching discrepancies and ensuring compliance.
• Visual assertion testing: Provides a GUI for creating assertions, making it easier to define conditions your API response must meet, without writing extensive code.
• Full compatibility with Postman scripts: Import your existing Postman scripts into Apidog for visual assertion creation and automated testing, preserving your existing test suites and enhancing them with Apidog’s advanced features.

Unique Capabilities That Surpass the Competition

Apidog offers unique tools that set it apart in the market, facilitating more comprehensive API testing, particularly beneficial for complex environments.

• Database connectivity for CRUD in API debugging: Directly connect to your database from Apidog to perform CRUD operations within API testing, which is essential for end-togetherness tests and more intricate API sequences.
• External programming language integration: Extend Apidog’s capabilities by integrating with external programming environments, allowing for bespoke test setups and harnesses.
• Perfect support for microservices architecture: Optimized to work seamlessly with microservices architectures, providing robust support and making it easier to manage and debug microservices-based applications.

Other Features

Apidog also offers Additional tools and modes to enhance your debugging practices and API development workflow.

• DESIGN/DEBUG Modes: Switch between design and debug modes to either focus on crafting your API specifications or debugging your API implementations.
• Generate code: Automatically generate code snippets in various programming languages to help developers integrate with the API or reproduce issues locally.
• Auto-Generate API Spec from Requests: If your API specification is outdated or missing, Apidog can reverse-engineer an API spec from the requests.

By leveraging Apidag’s comprehensive suite of debugging features, developers can significantly reduce the time and effort needed for API testing, ensuring robust, reliable, and scalable API solutions.

Best practice for different teams

For API design-first teams

Once the API design is complete, the backend development team can use the API Spec for developing and debugging the API. Apidog offers the following development and debugging features:

Before development

• Code generation: Apidog allows for the generation of client SDKs, server stubs, and API documentation in various programming languages based on the API specification. This automated process saves time and ensures consistency when implementing APIs.

After development

• Generating & sending API requests: Apidog allows you to generate requests based on the API specification.

• Dynamic values: Dynamic values allow you to generate a new value based on a predefined rule every time you send a request. This helps streamline the debugging process and ensures that each request contains unique data.

• Environments and services: Apidog supports the configuration of different environments and services, allowing developers to switch between settings for development, testing, and production environments. This feature provides flexibility in testing APIs under various conditions.

• Validate responses: Developers can validate API responses against predefined schemas or criteria to ensure that the data returned by the API meets the expected format and content. This helps maintain data integrity and consistency across API responses.

• Pre and post-operations: Apidog enables the definition of pre and post-processing steps that can be executed before and after API requests are sent. These operations can include data manipulation, logging, error handling, or any necessary actions to prepare for or handle the API response.

• Scripting: Developers have the ability to write and execute scripts within Apidog, allowing for advanced customization and automation of tasks during API development and testing. Scripts can be used to perform complex operations, interact with external systems, or enhance the functionality of API requests and responses.

• Endpoint cases: Endpoint Case in Apidog is a pre-defined test case for a specific API endpoint, which is used to streamline the process of creating, managing, and executing API tests, as well as integrating them into automated testing workflows.

For code-first teams

If your team follows a Code-first development approach, Apidog provides a range of tools to support this workflow:

• Apidog IDEA plugin: This plugin allows you to generate API specs from code, seamlessly integrating your code-first development process with API documentation creation.

• Scheduled import: Apidog offers a feature to automatically synchronize from Swagger, ensuring that your API documentation stays up-to-date with changes made in your code.

• DEBUG mode: With the debugging mode feature, you can make modifications to the API spec in real-time while debugging, empowering you to iterate on the API design as you develop and test your code.

• Dynamic values: Dynamic values allow you to generate a new value based on a predefined rule every time you send a request. This helps streamline the debugging process and ensures that each request contains unique data.

• Environments and services: Apidog supports the configuration of different environments and services, allowing developers to switch between settings for development, testing, and production environments. This feature provides flexibility in testing APIs under various conditions.

• Pre and post-operations: Apidog enables the definition of pre and post-processing steps that can be executed before and after API requests are sent. These operations can include data manipulation, logging, error handling, or any necessary actions to prepare for or handle the API response.

• Scripting: Developers have the ability to write and execute scripts within Apidog, allowing for advanced customization and automation of tasks during API development and testing. Scripts can be used to perform complex operations, interact with external systems, or enhance the functionality of API requests and responses.

• Endpoint cases: Endpoint Case in Apidog is a pre-defined test case for a specific API endpoint, which is used to streamline the process of creating, managing, and executing API tests, as well as integrating them into automated testing workflows.