Thingifier

An experiment in Model Based API Development.

Download

Thingifier comes preconfigured for download as:

• a simple todo list
• a more complex todo list manager

When you download one of the .jar files then use:

• java -jar runTodoListRestAPI-1.5.2.jar

Where you replace the name of the .jar file with the name of the file you downloaded.

• then visit http://localhost:4567 and you will see the welcome gui.
• there are links to the API documentation, and the View GUI

Command line options are:

• -port=1234 to change the port to 1234
• -version=1 to start with a different version.
  • Each api comes preconfigured with multiple versions, by default the 'best' version is used, so if you switch to an earlier version you might find more bugs.

API Challenges

API Challenges now lives in its own repository:

• https://github.com/eviltester/apichallenges

The hosted API Challenges app is still available at:

• https://apichallenges.eviltester.com

Usage

Currently Thingifier is suitable for using as a Practice Test App for API Testing.

Code Formatting

Java source formatting is enforced with Spotless and google-java-format using the AOSP four-space style.

To format the code:

mvn spotless:apply

To check formatting without changing files:

mvn spotless:check

The repository includes a pre-commit hook that runs the Spotless check before each commit as part of the full Maven verification. Enable the versioned hooks in a clone with:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

On Unix-like systems, if Git reports that the hook is not executable, run:

chmod +x .githooks/pre-commit

Local Verification

Run the same verification used by the pre-commit hook and CI with:

mvn -B clean verify

This runs unit tests, integration tests, Spotless, Checkstyle, and PMD.

GitHub Actions runs on pushes to master, pull requests targeting master, and manual dispatch. It runs a fast mvn -B spotless:check formatting job and Java 17/21 mvn -B "-Dspotless.check.skip=true" clean verify jobs for compile, unit tests, integration tests, Checkstyle, and PMD.

Details

Based on my Compendium-TA tool from 2003/2004.

If you actually want an ER Based tool then check out:

• Jeddict
• Evolutility

If you want to generate test data for an api, investigate:

• next.json-generator.com
• Java-Faker

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• Alan Richardson
• https://www.eviltester.com
• https://www.compendiumdev.co.uk
• https://uk.linkedin.com/in/eviltester
• https://twitter.com/eviltester

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Current TODO List:

• add additional challenges about instance limits e.g. try to exceed 20
• add additional challenges around field validation values and limits