Why is Automated API Testing Important to Organizations?

APIs (Applications Programming Interfaces) have streamlined and digitized business processes today. They have made it easy for organizations to innovate and come up with new applications that make business operations straightforward. 

For instance, the banking industry has evolved in recent years due to the use of APIs. Initially, one had to physically visit a bank if they wanted to initiate any transactions. However, APIs have changed this and customers can access banking services from their homes using their smart devices. Also, if you look at the main tech trends of 2021, you will realize that they are powered by APIs, showing the impact that APIs have had on technological advancements today.

So, what are these APIs? APIs are programming interfaces that make it possible for applications to share information as well as communicate with each other. They have taken center stage in transforming technology today. This is because they power trade, communication, and sharing of information in organizations.

Due to this, the use of APIs has been growing at an exponential rate. Every organization that wants to streamline and digitize its operations is either building its own APIs or implementing third-party APIs. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to restrategize and come up with new ways through which they can conduct business, something that has fuelled the use of APIs.

API Testing

The continued use of APIs has forced organizations to rethink their API testing strategies. When implementing an API, organizations need to make sure that the API is tested well to avoid any issues that might arise in the future and compromise the organizations’ operations. 

Even though one can test APIs manually, it is difficult, time-consuming, and might leave some important aspects of the API unattended. This makes automated API testing the better option for organizations. Automation allows organizations to come up with checklists and hook tests to certain events easily to make sure that every aspect of the API is tested. This would be very difficult with manual testing.

With automated testing, organizations are able to reap benefits such as;

Saving Time

When organizations automate their API testing procedures, their teams can validate the APIs and any new features within a short period. Furthermore, the development team can share information easily with other departments such as the design and marketing departments. This is because these other departments use the test results which they can get easily from the logs generated from the test results.

Reduces Feedback Cycle

When testing an API or any features that might be added to the API manually, it takes a lot of time to give feedback to developers and any other departments in an organization. 

However, automated API testing reduces the time taken for feedback to be generated. It also ensures that there is a faster validation of all the features of an API. In addition, automated API testing helps organizations identify any bugs and problems earlier in the development stages, making sure that such errors are handled when identified. 

Reduces Business Expenses

Manual testing requires a lot of manpower and resources to make sure that tests are conducted well. That notwithstanding, chances of organizations missing a thing or two with manual testing are very high.

However, automated API testing saves an organization many resources and money since the tests use far much fewer resources compared to manual testing. All they (organizations) need to do is to make sure that they have invested in the right test environments and test automation tools. Even though the cost might be high in the beginning, it will be cheaper to use automated API testing in the long run.

Reusability of Resources

As discussed above, setting automated API testing environments and getting the right test automation tools might be expensive and might take some time. However, once this is done, everything else gets very easy. Organizations can even reuse the same test environments and testing tools for different use cases and other APIs.

In addition, organizations gain knowledge when setting up the first test environment. This means that if they were to set up a new one, they would not only find it easy but would take far much less time.

Automate the Testing of your APIs

One of the ways of making your APIs successful is by automating your API tests. There are high chances of making errors with manual testing especially when testers are faced with complex situations. It is therefore important for organizations to automate the process of testing their APIs. Automation Testing even though one can make mistakes with automated testing, the rate of having mistaken is very low compared to manual testing of APIs.

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