What's the best way to test an Atom Server?

Question

Hi all, I'm setting up an Atom server to act as a REST-ful interface to my backend database.

I'd like to put together some tests to ensure: - the output is Atom and AtomPub compliant - the data produced is a correct representation of the state of the database

I'm comfortable enough with the concept of setting up the database in a known state. But I'm unsure of the best test strategy.

It would appear I could use JUnit testing, validating the results against Atom schemas, but I'd be interested in a more lightweight strategy.

I quite like Selenium, but can't quite get my 'head around' designing the tests in a non-interactive mode. Requesting and manipulating Atom feeds isn't like html browsing.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

There are some tools apart from Selenium that can help with testing an ATOM service - have a look at JMeter for example, which can help a lot with encoding the PUT / POST requests.

To be honest, though, for an easy-to-code API like ATOM you would probably end up being just as efficient if you go directly to JUnit; unless you just want to do throwaway exploratory testing, you'll end up writing code and / or scripts whatever tool you use, and getting familiar with a new tool will just add to the test development time.