I have been looking for a way to test multiple soap web services as part of a complete integrated end to end workflow that at the same time can provide valuable business documentation. The requirements are quite simple:
- Workflows can be written using natural language
- Multiple web services can be easily executed in sequence
- Development time must be minimal
My immediate thought was to use a cucumber type test framework, and after a recommendation I started to investigate SpecFlow.
SpecFlow is a way of binding business requirements to code through specification by example in .NET. It supports both behaviour driven development (BDD ) and test driven development (TDD). SpecFlow, like any other natural language test framework, can also be used as a tool to combine documentation and testing of existing code, and that is exactly what I have used it for.
Using this method for generating an arbitrary web service, in a feature scenario using Gherkin I can specify the specifics of a web service, the contract location, the methods to be used, and what the response should be.
In the binding statements, which SpecFlow uses to manage the logic required to execute the scenarios, I can execute the implementation of the call to the web service. There is a great example of this framework being used here, with multiple web services being called inside one feature.
This is probably not the most beautiful solution I have used to test services in a SOA environment but it provides the ability to get accessible system knowledge into the test and it’s extremely quick to set up.
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