Business & Integration IT Consultant
Soap UI – a powerful open-source tool for testing web services
API testing is an integral part of almost every quality analyst’s job in the software industry. Today we’ll introduce a powerful tool suitable for automating API testing – SoapUI. If you’re already familiar with SoapUI, check out our article:
What is SOAP UI?
SoapUI is a powerful open-source tool widely used for testing web services. It is a cross-platform tool developed in Java, supporting Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA. It is used to test applications with service-oriented architecture (SOA) or REST. It allows testers to perform functional testing, non-functional testing, performance testing, regression testing, compilation and load testing of various web services and APIs. It supports multiple protocols such as SOAP, REST, HTTP, JMS, and JDBC. It can present a moderately steep learning curve for a new user, as the interface is not always the most intuitive. Test cases can be entered using the graphical user interface (GUI). They can be executed either using the GUI or in a built-in manner using Apache Ant or Apache Maven.
Soap UI features
- Easy test generation using drag & drop, point.
- Powerful data-driven testing with data from files and databases.
- Scripts are easily reusable.
- Mocking services using RESTful mocking.
- Asynchronous testing.
- It provides a simple and clear user interface for both tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy people.
- It supports all standard protocols and technologies for testing various APIs and web services.
- Provides security or system vulnerability testing against malicious SQL commands, edge constraint scans, or stack overflows.
- Allows you to create custom plugins for different open-source environments.
- It can extend the HTTP protocol to send XML messages.
- It can exchange complete documents or call a remote procedure.
- It can be used to broadcast a message.
- It allows client applications to easily connect to remote services and invoke remote methods.
Soap UI testing types
1) Functional testing
- The powerful tool allows testers to write functional API tests in SoapUI.
- It supports Drag-Drop, which speeds up script development.
- It supports test debugging and allows testers to develop data-driven tests.
- It supports multiple environments – easy switching between QA, Dev and Prod environments.
- It allows advanced scripting (the tester can develop custom code depending on the scenario).
2) Security testing
- It has the ability to perform a full set of vulnerability scans.
- It prevents SQL Injection to secure databases.
- It scans stack overflow, which is caused by documents of huge size.
- It scans for cross-site scripting, which typically occurs when service parameters are exposed in messages.
- It performs fuzzing and boundary checking to prevent irregular service behaviour.
3) Load testing
- It distributes load tests among any number of loadUI agents.
- It simulates high volume and real-world load tests with ease.
- It enables advanced custom reporting to capture performance parameters.
- It allows end-to-end monitoring of system performance.
4) Schema compliance assertion
Compliance testing consists of a license certificate to validate resources and data and various service agreements to validate a web service or web API. In addition, these data authentication certificates and test scripts call the SoapUI tool before and after compliance testing to check if the last message received is associated with a WSDL or WADL schema definition.
5) Regression testing
Regression testing is functional testing used in SoapUI to analyze web service errors or failures. And it also reverts the web service after new changes in the current version of the tools. In other words, we can say that it is the tester’s responsibility to perform test suites and certify whether the existing functionalities break after new changes in the SoapUI tools and whether its working with the tools is fine.
6) SoapUI and supported protocols, technologies
SoapUI has the most comprehensive protocol support: SOAP, WSDL, REST, HTTP, HTTPS, AMF, JDBC, JMS.
7) Soap UI – integration with other automation tools
SoapUI integrates very well with popular tools:
Maven
Apache Maven is a software project management tool that can manage project builds, reporting, and documentation from a central repository. Maven can also perform SoapUI tests within the Maven Build tool using simple commands.
Hudson
HUDSON, a Java-based continuous integration tool that integrates with tools such as CVS, Subversion, Git, Perforce, Clearcase, and RTC. SoapUI also integrates with HUDSON, which helps us quickly detect bugs with every commit by developers.
JUnit
JUnit is a Unit Testing framework created in Java that can manage the flow of tests from SoapUI.
Apache Ant
Apache Ant, a Java library that is a command-line tool that assists in building software. Using the Soap UI command line, we can run tests as part of an automated build of ANT.
SoapUI advantages
- It provides a simple and user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI).
- Multiplatform PC-based application.
- It supports all standard protocols and technologies such as HTTP, HTTPS, AMF, JDBC, SOAP, WSDL, etc.
- SoapUI costs less than all other testing tools available on the market.
- It provides a fast and well-organized framework that generates many web service tests.
- It creates mock-ups on which testers can test real applications.
- It supports drag and drop functionality to access development scripts.
- It transfers data from a single response or source to different API calls without manual interaction in SoapUI.
- It facilitates collaboration between teams of testers and developers.
- The SOAPUI tool provides the ability to retrieve data from various web service sources without the need to develop any code.
- It’s a very complex application with many features that can sometimes be a little too complex for what we need.
- It has better integration than Postman for working with SOAP protocol (as that is what it was originally designed for).
- It is a more mature product and has been on the market longer.
- It’s an application that is more test-oriented and not just about API calling, documenting it and publishing it. It allows you to structure tests into test suites, test cases and test steps.
- Test execution can be integrated with tools such as Maven and CI/CD engine.
- It allows you to add Groovy scripts, which means you can add validations, configure and/or automate tests.
SoapUI disadvantages
- Safety testing requires improvements.
- The Mock response module should be more improved and simplified.
- It takes time to request large amounts of data and dual tasks to test web services.
When to use the SoapUI PRO version?
Data-driven: the PRO version helps us to work with external data source such as text files, XML, Groovy, Excel, file and database. This helps us scale our tests with a variety of inputs driven through the above sources. Test coverage: the PRO version allows testers to get a statistical report that shows functionality that is well tested and also areas that are NOT thoroughly tested. The drop-down reports even pinpoint what has NOT been tested and what has NOT been validated. Debugging tests: you can then run a test on a given breakpoint and see the current value of the SoapUI parameters. The test debugging interface makes it easy to keep track of test flow, variables, properties, requirements, context, and more, making it easier to create and improve tests. Support for multiple environments: Working with multiple environments such as DEV, QA, Pre-PROD environments can be a challenging task in an open source release as testers have to change endpoints to execute in different environments. The PRO version helps us to seamlessly switch between environments. Reporting: the PRO version comes with many report customization options that generate detailed reports at the Project, TestSuite, TestCase or LoadTest level. It also generates reports in a variety of formats such as PDF, HTML, Word or Excel. Security testing: both versions of SoapUI have options for testing security vulnerabilities such as XML bombs, SQL injection, fuzzing, cross-site scripting. However, only SOAP UI PRO can perform vulnerability scanning using the mouse-click security test generator. SQL Builder: For non-technical testers, writing complex SQL queries can be cumbersome. The SQL Builder tool in SOAP UI PRO can help them create SQL queries using the graphical interface of the SQL Builder tool. This feature helps us to speed up the implementation of data-driven testing. Support.
SoapUI architecture
- Test Configuration Files: Test Configuration Files are configuration files that contain test data, database connection, variables, expected results, and any other details about the environment or test setup.
- Selenium: It’s a Selenium JAR that uses user interface automation.
- Groovy: Groovy is a library that allows SoapUI users to provide Groovy as a scripting language.
- Third party API: This is a third party API that is used to create custom test automation frameworks.
- Properties: these are the required test property files used to store any dynamically generated data. Test properties are also used when configuring SSL and other security configurations for test requirements.
- SoapUI Runner : Used to run the SoapUI project.
- Test Report: SoapUI generates a JUnit-style test report and a user tool for reporting test results.
Soap UI download and pricing
You can download the tool from the official website here: SoapUI download. Find ReadyAPI pricing here: SoapUI pricing.
Soap UI tutorial
If you want to get better at SoapUI and expand your horizons, I recommend this Udemy tutorial for beginners. If you’re more advanced, you can check out this advanced tutorial.
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