Continuous API Mocking and Testing with Microcks and Testkube #apidays

In dynamic API development, efficiency and reliability are critical. This talk introduces three powerful cloud-native frameworks: Microcks, Keptn and Testkube.

Microcks enables automated API mocking and testing in a Kubernetes-native environment, supporting various API standards such as REST, gRPC, and GraphQL. Keptn provides event-driven orchestration for testing and QA, ensuring smooth API deployments. Testkube provides a flexible test execution environment for Kubernetes, allowing API tests to be triggered based on events. We will demonstrate how these tools accelerate API development, increase cloud-native software delivery agility, and ensure robust, standards-compliant, and well-tested APIs.

Transcript

1. qaware.de Continuous API Mocking and Testing with Microcks and Testkube Mario-Leander Reimer mario-leander.reimer@qaware.de @LeanderReimer #CloudNativeNerd
2. 2 Mario-Leander Reimer Managing Director | CTO @LeanderReimer #cloudnativenerd #qaware #gernperDude
3. A Quick History Lesson on Inter Process Communication (IPC) QAware | 3 REST 2000 by Roy T. Fielding RPC 14.01.1976 RFC 707 RPC Oct 1983 Birrel und Nielson DCOM 18.09.1996 Win95 HTTP/1.0 Mai 1996 RFC 1945 CORBA 1.0 Oct 1991 CORBA 2.0 August 1996 HTTP/1.1 Juni 1999 RFC 2616 CORBA 2.3 Juni 1999 Java RMI Feb 1997 JDK 1.1 XML-RPC 1998 SOAP 1.2 2003 CORBA 3.0 July 2002 RESTful Applications 2014 (?) HTTP/2.0 Mai 2015 RFC 7540 gRPC 1.0 Aug 2016 GraphQL Sep 2015 JSON-RPC v1 2005 v2 2010 A2A MCP
4. QAware | 4 Monolithic systems were relatively easy to implement and test. ▪ Almost no distribution or IPC ▪ Homogene technology stack ▪ Developed by one team ▪ Long release and test cycles ▪ Low infrastructure complexity ▪ Managed infrastructure
5. QAware | 5 Microservice-based systems with many APIs can be complex and cumbersome to implement and test. ▪ High distribution with various communication channels ▪ Heterogeneous technology stacks ▪ Implemented by many independent teams ▪ Short release and test cycles ▪ High infrastructure complexity with many components ▪ New operating model with more responsibility for the developers
6. Monolithic, linear CI/CD pipelines are suboptimal and will result in delayed feedback and long release cycles. QAware | 6 At the beginning often performed in parallel. Later on, delayed until the end of sprint or the release. Functionality vs. Performance vs. Security? Which one first? External access to cluster required Long running and flaky A lot of CI tooling required Only run on commit!
7. QAware | 7 Microservice-based systems with many APIs can be complex and cumbersome to implement and test. Cluster Microservice A Microservice B Microservice C External System X Backend System Y Team A Team C Team B Unknown GraphQL REST gRPC gRPC SOAP Kafka Mock Mock
8. QAware | 8 Agentic AI workloads with many APIs are even more complex and cumbersome to implement and test. Cluster Agent A Agent B MCP Server External System X Backend System Y Team A Team C Team B Unknown Voice MCP ACP MCP SOAP Mock Mock
9. Challenges of Modern API Development ▪ Manual testing and mocking slows down integration processes. ▪ Existing tools lack good support for mocking and testing on Kubernetes. ▪ Managing multiple API protocols (e.g. REST, gRPC, GraphQL, …) is complex. ▪ Time-consuming deployments of APIs across environments. ▪ Inconsistent support for standards leading to poor integration quality. 9 QAware | 9
10. lreimer/microcks-testkube
11. Microcks - Kubernetes native tool for API Mocking & Testing ▪ What is Microcks? – Kubernetes-native tool for API mocking and testing. – Supports REST, gRPC, GraphQL. ▪ Key Features – Automatic generation of mocks based on OpenAPI, AsyncAPI specs. – Integrated testing for contract validation. – Seamless support for Kubernetes environments. – Easy pipeline integration and good CLI support. ▪ Benefits – Faster integration with external services. – Reduced manual effort for creating and testing mocks. 11 QAware | 11 microcks/microcks
12. 12 QAware Microcks Architecture
13. Testkube - A cloud-native testing framework for Kubernetes. 13 QAware | 13 kubeshop/testkube ▪ Testkube natively integrates test orchestration and execution into Kubernetes and your CI/CD or GitOps pipeline ▪ Avoids vendor lock-in for test orchestration and execution in CI/CD pipelines ▪ Makes it possible to decouple test execution from build processes; test engineers should be able to run specific tests whenever needed ▪ Makes it easy to run any kind of tests - functional, load/performance, security, compliance, etc. in your clusters, without having to wrap them in docker-images or providing network access ▪ Provides a modular architecture for adding new types of tests and executors
14. Testkube Architecture and Concepts QAware | 14 default testkube Deployment Testkube Dashboard Webhook Receiver Testkube API Server CRDs CI/CD System Dev Executors Test Test Suite Deployment trigger flux-system run Mongo DB NATS Minio S3 CLI start store watch Test Trigger SUT Monitoring System Test Source Test Workflow
15. Conceptual Architecture QAware | 15 Packages Package publish update Run deploy watch Deploy watch Dev GitOps Build push Checkout Build Test Quality Package Dev Test (E2E, NFA) trigger test Tests run tests upload Update API Schema Definition Push via GH Action Pull via Importer upload
16. Secure Delivery Pipeline Architecture QAware | 16 Packages Package publish update Run deploy watch Deploy watch Dev GitOps Build push Checkout Build Test Quality Package Dev Test (E2E, NFA) trigger test Tests Quality Cockpit report PO report Build Status Code Quality Test Results Vulnerabilities fitness test promote and deploy?
17. QAware GmbH | Aschauer Straße 30 | 81549 München | GF: Dr. Josef Adersberger, Michael Stehnken, Michael Rohleder, Mario-Leander Reimer Niederlassungen in München, Mainz, Rosenheim, Darmstadt | +49 89 232315-0 | info@qaware.de Thanks you! Next step? Let's talk. Mario-Leander Reimer Managing Director, CTO mario-leander.reimer@qaware.de +49 151 61314748