Even after many years of experience in Quality Assurance, I was a bit intrigued when I heard the term “API Testing” for the first time.

Around two years back when I started with API Testing, it was entirely new to me. I was literally scared and not sure how to proceed. That we were provided with some API documentation and we need to start testing it, and parallelly we need to create Test Data using API. Uffff… It was really hard. But with the help of Tutorials and the sources available on the internet, I was scaling up a bit and tried to get something about API and API Testing. Luckily in my organization, they opted for Postman as our API Testing tool. With the help of the available materials, I really spent hours after the office gaining knowledge about the tool and how things should be done in it.

Even during the tough times, Postman helped me to learn better about API, Requests, and What are Tests? And I should admit that the learning portal from Postman really explains the logic and everything in a neat and elegant manner.

Days went on, and now I am able to build the requests with the documentation details, and I can basically Test it. Also, I can create my Test data through API, which saves time instead of doing it manually via the front end. So here the “Mockaroo” tool is a God-sent angel. That was one amazing tool for mocking up your test data to be more realistic 🙂

Now, I can confidently handle any API, of course, some are tricky. All I feel now is, finally, my efforts paid me off.

So to the beginners in API Testing, I would suggest the following:

1. Try to learn the basics of API.
2. Get to know why we are testing the API, The advantages, tools available for it.
3. Personally, Postman is my choice. But you can select yours based on your requirements. Because every tool has its pros and cons.
4. Most importantly, If you are completely from a QA/Testing background, kindly learn the basics of JavaScript. That is a cool language and you can learn it fast. 
5. Why JS? Because the knowledge is JS will help you to write/test your API in a more cool way.

So I should say Postman motivated me to learn JavaScript, and I will suggest “JavaScript Essential Training” from LinkedIn Learning. I got enlightened after completing the course. To the people out there thinking what’s API, and API Testing… All these are just jargon, don’t get carried away due to this. In the world of APIs, this is going to be a trend, and just go with the flow!! 

Happy API days ahead!! Everyone is a “Super Beginner”, when they want to learn something new to grow professionally.

Thank you! See you soon…