Introduction

YAML is a human-readable format to configure/declare the outcome of a system. Many projects orchestrate their automation scenarios using YAML due to its easy readable/manageable format(e.g. Kubernetes/Docker provides declarative/configurable .yml files to manage the containers). Zerocode provides the super-easy way to achieve this using YAML.

A Test Scenario in YAML DSL format

For example, if we have an GET API /api/v1/search/persons which returns the Http status as 200 and the below response payload,

{
	"exactMatches": true,
	"name": "Mr Bean",
	"city": "Lon"
}

then we can write the automation Test-case as below.

---
scenarioName: Validate a GET API
steps:
- name: find_match
  url: "/api/v1/search/persons"
  method: GET
  request:
    queryParams:
      city: Lon
      char: Funny
  verify:
    status: 200
    body:
      exactMatches: true
      name: Mr Bean

Where

• scenarioName: Unique Free text string describing precisely what is being tested
• name: Unique name of this step wrt this scenario
• url : Relative URL path or FQDN of the API end points
• method : An http method e.g. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, HEAD etc
• request : The request payload with http headers and/or query parameters
• queryParams : Http query-parameters to pass and filter the result
• verify : The expected http status and response payload
• status: An http status code e.g. 200 is OK, 201 is CREATED etc.

Using JayWay JSON Path Between The Steps

The JSON Path can be used to pick an element/field and reuse it in subsequent steps.

In the below test scenario, please have a look at the 2nd step’s verifications block where various JSON Paths are used to pick/reuse the desired fields rather than hard-coded values.

---
scenarioName: As simple GET request response Multi STep
steps:
- name: find_match
  url: "/api/v1/search/persons"
  method: GET
  request:
    queryParams:
      char: Funny
      city: Lon
  verify:
    status: 200
    body:
      exactMatches: true
      name: Mr Bean
 
- name: find_match2
  url: "/api/v1/search/persons"
  method: GET
  request:
    queryParams:
      char: Kids
      city: Lon
  verify:
    status: "$EQ.${$.find_match.response.status}"
    body:
      exactMatches: true
      name: "$CONTAINS.STRING:Bean"
      city: "${$.find_match2.request.queryParams.city}"

Using Array in YAML

e.g. the API responds with a person payload with array of addresses.

In an YAML file if the line starts with a - mark, then the containing element is an array.

---
scenarioName: "A simple GET API Scenario" #comments allowed
steps:
- name: "find_match"
  url: "/api/v1/persons/p001"
  method: "GET"
  request:
    headers:
      x-api-key: "Ama-zing-key"
      x-api-secret: "Sec-ret-stuff"
  verify:
    status: 200 #comment - a http status code as int value
    body:
      exactMatches: true
      name: "Mr Bean"
      addresses:
      - type: "office"
        line1: "10 Random St"
      - type: "home"
        line1: "300 Random St"

Here addresses in the response body is a collection of individual address. The equivalent JSON looks like below.

{
  "addresses": [
    {
      "type": "office",
      "line1": "10 Random St"
    },
    {
      "type": "home",
      "line1": "300 Random St"
    }
  ]
}

Conclusion

We can find the examples in the HelloWorld GitHub repo under yaml folder.

JSON to YAML and YAML to JSON

• JSON to YAML : https://www.bairesdev.com/tools/json2yaml (New)
  • (OLD/Deprecated link: https://www.json2yaml.com/)
• YAML to JSON : https://codebeautify.org/yaml-to-json-xml-csv
• JSON to YAML(another) : https://codebeautify.org/json-to-yaml