API Testing

Discovery Questions

Check .agents/qa-project-context.md first — if it exists, use it and skip anything already answered there. Then:

1. REST, GraphQL, or both? REST-only suites use standard HTTP assertions. GraphQL needs query/mutation builders and benefits from an introspection-diff snapshot.
2. Auth mechanism? JWT, API key, OAuth 2.0, or session cookies — each needs a different fixture strategy.
3. OpenAPI/Swagger spec available? If yes, auto-generate Zod schemas as contracts (orval, openapi-zod-client) and consider spec-driven fuzzing with Schemathesis.

Core Principles

1. Test contracts, not implementations. Assert on response shape, status codes, and headers — not on internal logic or database state.
2. Schema validation catches drift before it breaks consumers. A failing schema test means you caught a breaking change before your frontend did.
3. Auth flows are tests too — don't just hardcode tokens. Test login, refresh, expiration, and permission boundaries.
4. Response time is a testable assertion. Performance regressions caught in CI are cheaper than production incidents.

Exploratory vs Automated: Tooling

API exploration (debugging, manual probing, OpenAPI playground) and automated API testing are different jobs. Use the right tool for each:

Skip Postman/Insomnia for new projects unless your team already has investment there — file-based tools (Bruno, Hurl) are easier to review in PRs and survive when collections drift.

Playwright API Testing

APIRequestContext supports standalone API tests without launching a browser and shares cookie/storage state with browser contexts. Use it for:

• Standalone API tests — request.get/post/... with status, header, and body assertions.
• Combined browser + API tests — seed data via API, assert it appears in the UI, then clean up via API.
• Authenticated fixtures — log in once in a fixture, hand a pre-authenticated APIRequestContext to tests, and dispose it on teardown. Never hardcode tokens.

See references/playwright-setup.md for the playwright.config.ts, standalone tests, combined browser+API test, and the authenticated API fixture.

Schema Validation

Validate response shape against a schema rather than spot-checking individual fields with toHaveProperty. Two common approaches:

• Zod 4 — define a schema, safeParse the response, and assert result.success. Log result.error.issues on failure for a precise diff. Use the Zod 4 native string formats: z.email(), z.uuid(), z.iso.datetime() — the chained z.string().email() forms are deprecated and slated for removal.
• AJV with JSON Schema — when you already have JSON Schema (e.g. from an OpenAPI spec), compile and validate with ajv + ajv-formats.

Schema-as-contract: have both the API and the tests import the same schema file. If the response shape changes, consumer tests fail immediately. With an OpenAPI spec, auto-generate the schema (orval or openapi-zod-client). For spec-first teams, add Schemathesis as a CI job to fuzz the live API against the spec and catch undocumented shapes and edge-case 500s.

See references/schema-validation.md for the Zod 4, AJV, schema-as-contract, and Schemathesis implementations.

Test Patterns

Cover each endpoint with a happy-path test plus at least one error-path test. The common patterns:

• CRUD lifecycle — a describe.serial block that creates, reads, updates, deletes, then verifies the 404. Carries the resource id across steps.
• Auth flows — login success, invalid credentials (401), expired token (401), token refresh, and permission boundary (403). Treat auth as its own describe block.
• Error responses — 400 (malformed body), 422 (validation with field details), 429 (rate limit + retry-after). Don't ship happy-path-only suites.
• Response headers — assert content-type, cache-control, and rate-limit headers directly (not behind a conditional that may never fire). See the pattern below.
• Pagination — first-page metadata, out-of-bounds empty page, and rejection of invalid page size.
• File upload/download — multipart upload and content-disposition header verification.
• GraphQL — a small gql helper, then query / mutation / invalid-query (errors array) cases, plus an introspection-diff snapshot to catch silently-removed fields.
• Webhooks — spin up a throwaway HTTP server, register a webhook, trigger the event, and assert delivery.

See references/test-patterns.md for the full runnable implementations of every pattern above plus performance assertions.

Response Headers

Headers carry the contract: cache directives, rate-limit info, content type, CORS policy. Assert them with response.headers() and index by lowercase name; don't gate the assertion behind an if (rateLimited) that may not fire.

test('GET /api/users sets expected response headers', async ({ request }) => {
  const response = await request.get('/api/users');
  const headers = response.headers();

  expect(headers).toBeDefined();
  expect(headers['content-type']).toContain('application/json');
  expect(headers['cache-control']).toBeDefined();   // "no-store" | "max-age=60" | ...
});

For the rate-limit and retry-after variants, see references/test-patterns.md (Response Header Validation).

Performance Assertions

Response time and payload size are testable assertions — assert that a hot endpoint responds within a budget (e.g. 500ms), that payloads stay under a size ceiling, and that the API survives a burst of concurrent requests without 5xx. See references/test-patterns.md (Performance Assertions section) for the code.

Anti-Patterns

1. Hardcoded auth tokens

Tokens expire, rotate, and differ across environments. Use a login fixture that acquires tokens dynamically.

2. Testing against production

API tests create, modify, and delete data. Run against a dedicated test environment or local instance.

3. Not validating error responses

Happy-path-only suites miss the most common production issues. Test 400, 401, 403, 404, and 500 responses for every endpoint.

4. Asserting headers only conditionally

Headers carry cache directives, rate limit info, content type, and CORS policy. Assert them directly on every relevant response — a check buried inside if (rateLimited) may never run and proves nothing.

5. No cleanup after test data creation

Tests that create resources without deleting them pollute the database. Use afterEach/afterAll hooks or fixture teardown.

6. Treating API tests as unit tests

Don't mock the database — API tests verify the contract from the consumer's perspective. Mock only genuine third parties you don't own (payment gateways, external SaaS).

7. Ignoring idempotency

PUT and DELETE should be idempotent. Test that calling them twice produces the same result.

Done When

• Every target endpoint has at least a happy-path test and at least one error-path test (4xx or 5xx response validated).
• Auth flow tested as its own describe block: successful login, invalid credentials, expired token, and permission boundary (403).
• Schema validation assertions on response shape using Zod 4 or AJV — not just toHaveProperty spot-checks.
• Header assertions exist for at least content-type and any cache/rate-limit headers the API sets, asserted unconditionally.
• Contract tests in place for any endpoint consumed by a different team or service (shared schema file; for consumer-driven verification use contract-testing).
• Genuine third-party calls (payment gateways, external SaaS) are mocked or virtualized; the API and its database run for real.
• CI job for the suite exits 0 (green) against the test environment.

Reference Files (in references/)

• playwright-setup.md — playwright.config.ts, standalone API tests, combined browser+API tests, and the authenticated APIRequestContext fixture.
• schema-validation.md — Zod 4 and AJV/JSON-Schema response validation, the schema-as-contract pattern, and Schemathesis spec-driven fuzzing.
• test-patterns.md — Runnable CRUD lifecycle, auth flows, error responses, response headers, pagination, file upload/download, GraphQL (+ introspection diff), webhook, and performance tests.

Related Skills

• contract-testing — Consumer-driven contract verification with Pact/broker; go there when a separate team consumes your API and you need guaranteed compatibility, not just a shared schema.
• playwright-automation — Browser-based E2E testing, Page Object Model, and combined browser + API patterns.
• ci-cd-integration — Running API test suites in CI pipelines, parallelization, and environment management.
• test-strategy — Deciding what to test at the API layer vs. unit vs. E2E.