Sauce Labs Adds API Testing, Monitoring To Its Continuous Testing Cloud

Sauce Labs is delivering a more modern and integrated approach to API testing, The company is adding API testing and monitoring to its continuous testing cloud to accelerate debugging and shorten release times.

by Tom Donoghue

Tags: APIs, cloud, data, debug integration, Sauce Labs, testing,

Sauce Labs is adding new data-driven API testing and monitoring capabilities to its continuous testing cloud. The update lets DevOps and agile teams improve remediation and debugging tasks and shorten release cycles, according to Sauce Lab execs. 

 

“With API testing now integrated into the Sauce Labs platform, testers and developers can gain immediate insight into how and when integrations break for streamlined diagnostics and debugging,” said Matt Wyman, Sauce Labs chief product and growth officer.

 

The time has come for a more modern and integrated approach to API testing, Wyman noted. In part, he described it this way: 

As the number of APIs communicating with microservices in modern apps continues to increase, many bugs cannot be captured by UI testing alone. A legacy strategy that relies strictly on UI testing often leaves both developers and QA teams unable to determine if a functional test has failed due to a broken endpoint, API flow, or a bug in the application itself, in turn costing development teams valuable time and creating significant frustration as they work to identify the cause of the failure.

Specifically, Sauce Labs API testing aims to provide a comprehensive solution that helps increase confidence in API quality in every critical part of the API lifecycle through development, staging and production. The update enables development and quality teams to:

  • Detect more API bugs and avoid false negatives. Users get expanded observability with a wide range of coverage capabilities, including data-driven testing and positive/negative testing of endpoints and flows. Whether writing complex tests or instantly generating tests from spec files or payloads, users can ensure high observability in every test built by any stakeholder.
  • Debug and protect API testing data. Users can accelerate “in-sprint debugging” with detailed reporting and dashboards. At the same time, they can maintain test data integrity and security with Sauce Connect tunnels.
  • Develop APIs in parallel with testing that accelerates workflows. Sauce API testing optimizes velocity by streamlining collaboration and giving developers detailed reporting in a unified dashboard, allowing management to see exactly what teams are doing and quickly understand how test results are coming along.
  • Release APIs with greater confidence. The Sauce Labs approach provides visibility across all of an organization’s API testing in a global view that remains accurate throughout rapid iteration. End-to-end tests can be reused as monitors that run continuously with refactoring in any environment with or without a CI/CD, thereby maintaining accurate and reliable feedback loops.

The new API testing capabilities on the Sauce Labs cloud fully integrate with Sauce Connect tunnels, enabling enterprises to more confidently test and monitor both internal and public APIs. The new API testing integration also follows Sauce Labs’ earlier acquisition of API Fortress, Wyman noted. 

 

As such, the update represents “a first step to deliver our vision of an integrated toolchain of solutions that accelerate the delivery of user value by providing capabilities to manage quality risk throughout the software lifecycle,” he added. 

 

Wyman commented on the importance of Sauce Labs’ acquisition of API Fortress in a recent blog post: 

First of all, API testing is a need our customers have. They must be able to test API endpoints quickly and easily. Adding API Fortress to our product lineup means we will be able to offer customers a richer and more complete continuous testing experience that includes API testing, visual end-to-end testing, and front-end performance testing to go along with the functional UI testing that Sauce Labs is already known for.

 

Second, this acquisition allows us to further our goal of investing in the developer community. We talk a lot about how quality is everyone’s responsibility, not just QA—and adding API Fortress means we have more resources that help facilitate collaboration between testers and developers.

 

In fact, the combination of Sauce Labs and API Fortress will make life significantly easier for developers and help make them more productive as they build modern API-driven applications. 

 

With API Fortress as part of the Sauce Labs capability set, developers will know much more quickly if and when a broken endpoint is responsible for a failed test. This insight will in turn enable them to spend less time searching for the cause of failed tests—and more time doing what they do best.

API testing and monitoring on the Sauce Labs cloud is available now. Customers using the Sauce Labs cloud can choose from a free tier (with a limited number of API test executions) or a paid tier featuring additional enterprise solutions and services. 




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