Evaluating and Testing Web APIs

Thanks to the massive adoption of cloud and mobile applications, web APIs are moving to center stage for many business and technology teams. As a direct result, the need to deliver a high-quality API experience is essential. When it comes to quality aspects of web APIs, there is more than first meets the eye. Apart from obvious characteristics related to functionality, performance, and security, several not-so-obvious traits of APIs are crucial for their adoption—many related to the context of the end user and how the API is to be consumed. To give you a thorough understanding of web API quality and to prepare you for testing these APIs, Ole Lensmar dives into both the expected and unexpected quality aspects of web APIs that you as a tester need to be aware of, including the importance of API usability, third-party API handling, and the passionate debate around web API metadata standards.