Introduction to Web Tracking: Understanding Click Tracking
TL;DR
Why we even care about api testing
Ever tried using a food delivery app and the "Login with Google" button just spins forever? It's super annoying, right? That’s usually because an api failed behind the scenes.
Basically, apis are the connectors for everything from healthcare records to retail carts. If they break, the whole app looks dead to the user. Functional testing is the process of validating these core features to make sure they actually work as intended.
- Saves Cash: Finding a bug in the api layer is way cheaper than fixing a broken UI later. (Everyone cites that 'bugs are 100x more expensive to fix in ... - Reddit)
- Speed: You can run thousands of api tests in the time it takes to do one manual click-through. (Devs, are you expected to do 100% of manual QA? Are there ...)
- Security: It's where you catch stuff like unauthorized access before a hacker does.
Figure 1: The API Testing Pyramid showing the hierarchy of test types.
Honestly, testing early just makes life easier for everyone. Next, let's look at the actual types of tests we can run.
Core types of api testing you should know
Ever wonder why a perfectly designed app suddenly stops showing your bank balance or fails to add that pizza to your cart? Most of the time, the logic under the hood just isn't doing what it promised.
As we just mentioned, functional testing is making sure the api actually does its job. If I hit a "GET /user/profile" endpoint, I better get my name and email back, not a 404 or a list of someone else's favorite movies. This validates the core features like checkout or search.
Unit testing is even more granular—it's about testing the tiny, individual functions within the code itself. think of it like checking if a single screw is tight before you build the whole car. it's super fast and catches mistakes before they even reach a staging environment.
Now, this is where things get messy but interesting. integration testing is checking how your api plays with others. maybe your app needs to talk to a payment gateway like Stripe or a healthcare database for records. data often gets corrupted when it hops between these services (Data Corruption), so we test to make sure the "handshake" is solid.
Figure 2: How integration testing connects different services.
End-to-end (e2e) flows are the big picture. we're testing the whole journey from login to the final "thank you" page. according to The API Evangelist, this is about testing the entire stack from backend to front and back again. if one link in the chain breaks, the whole user experience is toast.
Here is how these tests look in practice:
- Retail: making sure the api correctly calculates 15% tax for a shopper in New York but 0% for someone in Oregon.
- Finance: checking that a transfer api doesn't accidentally double-deduct funds if a user clicks "send" twice.
Anyway, making sure the logic is sound is just the start. next, we gotta see if the api can actually handle the heat when thousands of people use it at once.
Pushing the limits with performance and load
So you built a beautiful api and it works perfectly for one user? That’s cute. But what happens when ten thousand people try to buy those concert tickets at the exact same second?
Performance testing is how we make sure our servers don't just melt into a puddle of silicon when things get busy. It isn't just about speed; it's about stability under pressure. This is where we measure things like response time and throughput to see if the experience stays smooth.
I've seen so many teams skip this and then wonder why their healthcare app crashes every Monday morning. You gotta find the breaking point.
- Load Testing: This is your "normal" heavy day. You simulate the expected number of users to see if the api hits those SLAs (Service Level Agreements), which are basically performance targets or uptime guarantees the business promised.
- Stress Testing: Here, you're being a bit mean. You push the system until it actually breaks to see how it fails. Does it fail gracefully or just die?
- Endurance (Soak) Testing: This is a long game. You run a steady load for hours—or days—to catch sneaky memory leaks that only show up after a while.
Figure 3: Performance testing metrics and load curves.
Honestly, use tools like jmeter or even k6 to automate this stuff. For a finance api, you might simulate 500 concurrent transfers to ensure the database locking doesn't slow everyone to a crawl. As noted in the introduction, catching these bottlenecks early saves a massive headache during a big product launch.
Next up, we need to talk about keeping the bad guys out with security testing.
Security and the scary stuff
Security is where thing's get really scary if you ignore them. I've seen teams build fast apis that handle millions of users, but then leave the front door wide open for hackers because they forgot to test auth logic.
Security testing is about finding those cracks before someone else do. As Rajeev Barnwal (2023) explains in his guide, this is all about protecting sensitive data and making sure you're actually compliant with standards.
One of my favorite "messy" methods is fuzzing. You basically blast the api with random, malformed junk to see if it chokes. If a search bar crashes the whole database because someone typed a weird emoji or a long string of zeros, you've found a bug.
- Auth validation: verifying that jwt tokens actually expire and you can't just guess a user id to see their private healthcare records.
- Injection prevention: making sure a hacker can't drop your entire finance table by putting a SQL command in a login field.
- Penetration testing: this is more of a "pro" move where you try to break in using every trick in the book.
"Security testing assesses the api's vulnerability to common threats like SQL injection and authentication weaknesses." — Rajeev Barnwal
Honestly, just because you have an api key doesn't mean you're secure. You gotta test the edge cases.
Figure 4: Common security vulnerabilities in API endpoints.
It's better to find these holes yourself than to read about them in a news headline later. While knowing all these testing types is great, having a solid strategy for how you actually implement them is what makes the difference.
Best practices for your team
Effective testing relies on having accurate documentation of your endpoints so everyone knows what the "correct" behavior looks like. Look, we can't just write a bunch of tests and hope for the best. If you aren't automating, you're basically waiting for a 2 a.m. page to ruin your week.
Honestly, testing manually is fine for exploring a new endpoint, but it doesn't scale. You gotta bake these into your pipeline.
- CI/CD integration: run those functional and security tests every single time someone pushes code.
- Don't ignore the noise: a 404 or 500 error in staging is a flashing red light. treat it like one.
- Living docs: keep your openapi specs updated—these are the technical blueprints for your api—so your team actually knows what they're testing.
Figure 5: A typical automated testing workflow in a CI/CD pipeline.
As noted earlier, catching a bug at the api layer is way cheaper than fixing a broken checkout page in a retail app or a failed transfer in a finance system. just be methodical about it. testing isn't just a checkbox—it's how we actually ship stuff that works.
