Improving API accessibility with no-code automation testing in the BFS sector

The scope of APIs in the banking and finance industry is ever-increasing. But the rising vulnerabilities pose a threat to their growth. That could also severely affect cloud service dependencies and internal APIs. As APIs evolve with their newer versions, there is a possibility that the functionality and uptime might greatly suffer. Hence, it is critical to test APIs and improve their accessibility for a reliable backend. Financial institutions must establish a strong API testing backbone to improve API accessibility and enhance business values.

Every time we add new functionality, testers must write a new set of codes, install and test them in the frontend, and finally integrate them with the application in the backend. If the code fails to perform at the initial stage, it might affect the feature after integration without fixing the errors.

Software development and testing have changed over the years, and many technologies like DevOps, CI/CD, the API, and Agile methodologies collectively have contributed to this change. As software and applications become more dynamic, the teams have incorporated new techniques to conduct end-to-end quality testing to evaluate the software. 

Why no-code automation testing for API?

API proves to be a source of outstanding end-user experiences as they gradually become the puzzle pieces for modern banking applications. Financial institutions are hosting API-based cloud services to meet user requirements. Yet there is a challenge that organizations must overcome. Cloud offerings change and evolve, and to keep up with API integrations requires continuous testing.

We all know that continuous testing without automation requires time, effort, and money. Organizations must opt for no-code continuous automation testing to prevent code breakage, poor usability, and accessibility. APIs require regression testing frequently, and the QA team manually conducting regression testing is not a viable solution because repetitiveness, monotony, and frequency nature of continuous can introduce errors in the software and take much time to resolve.

Testing APIs are often time-consuming, which also includes a chunk of investment. Thus, organizations are opting for no-code automation testing to reduce the time, money and effort while eliminating errors. No-code automation testing platforms allow developers to create applications following the visual programming models.

No-code automation makes it easy for the team to create API tests and verify functionality and uptime. More the QA and DevOps teams use the no-code automation testing solutions, the faster they will discover an incomparable way to validate high-quality integrations and their UI representations.

What are the crucial areas that need to be examined in API Testing?

API testing focuses on the three most critical aspects of the testing process – connectivity, response, and performance.

  1. Connectivity – Testing the connectivity with the server is the first aspect of API testing. Users who wish to test the connectivity can dial the API using the service URL. The code of this service command is 200. The users can establish a connection if the server responds to the call. Similarly, if there is no response, the connectivity fails.
  2. Response – The second aspect of API testing is to test the correct response time for different API requests. It involves validating the response command with accurate values and an appropriate status code. Following are the examples of validated status codes commonly found in API testing.
    1. Error response code is 401 UNAUTHORIZED in case of missing or invalid authentication token
    1. Error response code is 403 FORBIDDEN when the user is not authorized to perform the operation
    1. Combining the above two, the error response code will be 404 NOT FOUND owing to security reasons
    1. Error response code is 409 CONFLICT if there are duplicate entries or users try to delete root objects
    1. Error response code is 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR when the consumer cannot identify the exact error from their end
  3. Performance – The third most important aspect of API testing is the performance of the API. The API performance is tested and validated by calculating the response time of the API request sent. The APIs must handle the load of many requests. The fast response time and resilience toward high loads are the two criteria for evaluating the performance in API testing.

An API may register multiple users. An API must be able to handle the load by distributing, efficiently performing, and responding to a web service call without disrupting the API performance. The quality of APIs is evaluated based on their core functionality, uptime, speed, and end-to-end performance. The end-to-end API assures that all workflows are functional and in perfect order.  

The use of API in the BFS sector

The covid-19 pandemic has changed the financial and banking sector by creating new avenues for API workflows. The banking and financial industries use APIs to address user requirements through this embedded technology. Financial institutions are using APIs in three ways.

  • Private API: Financial institutions use Private APIs to improve their internal processes, operational efficiency, and productivity.
  • Partner API: Financial institutions use Partner APIs to collaborate with third-party partners like clearinghouses, brokerages, underwriters, and custodian banks, where the partners use the bank’s platform to provide outstanding services to their customers.
  • Open/Public API: Financial institutions use Open APIs to gain business and improve their customer bases. With open APIs, organizations are growing their business by extending their services.

Is API testing difficult to conduct without no-code automation solution?

API testing is critical in short release cycles as there are frequent changes. API testing does not affect the test outputs in anyways with the frequent occurring changes. API testing ensures product quality throughout the CI/CD processes. API testing requires users to handle chunks of JSON responses to match fields and surface issues. However, the difficulty will arise for non-developers to implement as testing API responses involves writing code, analyzing JSON, and writing it to variables.

It would be difficult to test asynchronous endpoints, as asynchronous APIs take a little longer to respond due to the unpredictable behavior of background server processes. It requires an infrastructure for continuous testing to test such asynchronous services. What a no-code automation solution does is blend the API and continuous testing. As the automation testing solution is codeless, it is easier for non-developers to implement codeless testing to validate API responses.

How no-code automation testing improves API accessibility for BFS sector?

No-code test automation solution works best with unit testing and regression testing. Both these tests are an integral part of API testing. To improve the API accessibility, the testing team considers integration testing with unit testing. But the fundamental difference between a unit test and an integration test is that the former covers an isolated part of a system with no external dependencies, and the latter covers more of the system put together, which uncovers bugs when multiple units are combined.

Unit tests cover underlying APIs that measure the accessibility of information or interactions to the right place. APIs include UI components validated by unit testing to gain better accessibility to underlying APIs. Additionally, integration testing can also be automated to improve accessibility. Automating both unit testing and integration testing can help reduce regressions effort, simultaneously improving the value and the quality of the applications.

Automating APIs with no-code testing solutions can help reduce the burden of manual testing for the team. Organizations opt for a no-code test automation solution instead of manual testing to be more efficient in their testing services. By building a clear test strategy and adding coverage for accessibility, teams can ensure and inform the quality of the codes within the process and prevent regression burden from deploying to production.

Conclusion

Adopting continuous API testing is a wise decision as it helps resolve underlying API problems like outages, technical failures, and functional glitches. Continuous API testing helps detect early API errors and reduces mean time to recovery (MTTR).

With a no-code API automation testing solution, continuous integration and deployment happen faster and are validated immediately, helping organizations save time, money, and effort.

At Yethi, we understand that the future looks promising in API testing. An increasing number of applications operating on Cloud platforms using ‘as-a-service’ business models need stable and secure functioning APIs. Driven by constant innovation, we utilize it to help organizations reduce the testing time of their applications. We know what it is like to keep up with the competition in the market, and we help financial industries to maintain their commitment. 

With years of experience and expertise in quality assurance of business applications, we combine traditional testing and modern functional and security testing to ensure the quality of APIs in terms of their functionality and platform security. We have developed a library of more than half a million test cases, including used cases, like UPI and lending. With our codeless test automation platform, Tenjin, we have moved up a level in testing and innovation. We automate your end-to-end software testing cycle and validate the request and response configuration of APIs.

Our services and solution align with the open banking ecosystem, and we offer validation coverage that includes functionalities, API security, performance, and automation. Our solution is built with cutting-edge technology and accelerators, adding significant value to time, cost, effort, and customer satisfaction. Contact us for a free consultation.