How to mock remote REST API in unit test with Spri

Question

Assume I have made a simple client in my application that uses a remote web service that is exposing a RESTful API at some URI /foo/bar/{baz}. Now I wish to unit test my client that makes calls to this web service.

Ideally, in my tests, I’d like to mock the responses I get from the web service, given a specific request like /foo/bar/123 or /foo/bar/42. My client assumes the API is actually running somewhere, so I need a local "web service" to start running on http://localhost:9090/foo/bar for my tests.

I want my unit tests to be self-contained, similar to testing Spring controllers with the Spring MVC Test framework.

Some pseudo-code for a simple client, fetching numbers from the remote API:

// Initialization logic involving setting up mocking of remote API at 
// http://localhost:9090/foo/bar

@Autowired
NumberClient numberClient // calls the API at http://localhost:9090/foo/bar

@Test
public void getNumber42() {
    onRequest(mockAPI.get("/foo/bar/42")).thenRespond("{ \"number\" : 42 }");
    assertEquals(42, numberClient.getNumber(42));
}

// ..

What are my alternatives using Spring?

Answer 1

If you want to unit test your client, then you'd mock out the services that are making the REST API calls, i.e. with mockito - I assume you do have a service that is making those API calls for you, right?

If on the other hand you want to "mock out" the rest APIs in that there is some sort of server giving you responses, which would be more in line of integration testing, you could try one of the many framework out there like restito, rest-driver or betamax.