Tutorial: Testing a LoopBack project

Before you begin

Before you begin, you must install the developer toolkit on your local machine. For details, see Installing the toolkit.

The following diagram shows the sequential flow through the IBM API Connect Developer toolkit tutorials for working with LoopBack projects. Before beginning a tutorial, ensure that you have completed the previous tutorials in the sequence. You can click a tutorial in the diagram to open the instructions for that tutorial.

cd acme-bank

About this tutorial

Test a LoopBack project by using the command line

Test a LoopBack project by using the API Designer Explore tool

To test your API endpoints using the API Designer Explore tool, complete the following steps:

1. Change directories to your LoopBack project and enter the following command:

   apic edit

   After a brief pause, the console displays this message:

   Express server listening on http://127.0.0.1:9000

   API Designer opens in your web browser, initially displaying the login page if you haven't logged in recently.

   Note: The login page prompts you to Sign in with IBM Cloud. Enter your IBM Cloud credentials, which authenticates you on IBM Cloud and provides access to the API Manager features such as Publish, Explore, and Analytics. You will continue to work in API Designer locally to create APIs, models and data sources.
   Note: If you need to run the editor on a different port, use the following command:

   

   PORT=port_number apic edit

   

   set PORT=port_number && apic edit

   where port_number is the port number to use.
2. Start the local test servers by completing the following steps:
   1. In the test console at the bottom of the screen, click the Start the servers icon:
      
   2. Wait until the Running message is displayed:
      

      Depending on your project configuration and whether other processes are running, different port numbers might be displayed.

3. Click http://127.0.0.1:port_number to display the API root endpoint. For the default LoopBack (empty or hello-world) project, you'll see something like this:

   {"started":"2016-03-07T22:24:55.322Z","uptime":35.839}

   Note: To stop your project, click the Stop the servers icon:

   

   To restart it, click the Restart the servers icon:

   
4. Click . You will see the API Explore tool. The side bar shows all the REST operations for the LoopBack models in the API. Models that are based on PersistedModel by default have a standard set of create, read, update, and delete operations.
5. Click the operation branch.create in the left pane to display the endpoint.
   
   The center pane displays summary information about the endpoint, including its parameters, security, model instance data, and response codes. The right pane provides template code to call the endpoint using the curl command, with a drop down menu to choose languages such as Ruby, Python, Java™, and Node.
6. To test the REST endpoints in the API Explore tool, on the right pane click Try it, and then scroll down to Parameters and click Generate to generate some dummy data. By default, the generated data includes the properties defined for the endpoint, for example:
   
7. Click Call operation to call the endpoint with that data. You should see the request and response parameters, along with the JSON instance data that you entered.
   Note: If you see an error message due to an untrusted certificate for localhost, click the link provided in the error message in API Explore to accept the certificate, then proceed to call the operations in your web browser. The exact procedure depends on the web browser you are using.

   If you load the REST endpoints directly in your browser, you will see the message: {"name":"PreFlowError","message":"unable to process the request"}. You must use API Explore to test REST endpoints in your browser because it includes the requisite headers and other request parameters.

8. Test the REST endpoints by using the curl command shown, for example:

   curl --request POST \
     --url https://localhost:4002/api/branches \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --header 'x-ibm-client-id: default' \
     --header 'x-ibm-client-secret: SECRET' \
     --data '{"type":"ATM location","phone":"408-123-4567"}' -k

9. Paste the command into a console window being sure to include the -k at the end of the command (as shown in the example) to avoid certificate errors. If you wish, edit the JSON data to make it more meaningful. When you enter the command, the console will show the data entered, for example {"type":"ATM location","phone":"408-123-4567"}.
10. To confirm that the operation added a model instance, click branch.find then click Call operation with no filters to display all branch instances. An example result (with two model instances) would blook like this:

    [   
    {
         "type": "standalone",
         "phone": "831-555-1212"
       },
       {
         "type": "ATM location",
         "phone": "408-123-4567"
       }
     ]

You can experiment with other operations if you wish, to get a feeling for the standard REST endpoints of a LoopBack PersistedModel.

Note: You can also run the API Explore tool directly from the command line. Ensure that your local test servers are running, then run the command apic explore. The API Explore tool opens, and shows the operations, definitions, and documentation for all of the APIs that are contained in your project directory. You can specify a single API to explore by specifying the name of the API in the command. The -e or --external options open the Explore tool on 0.0.0.0 instead of the default 127.0.0.1. The external option binds the server to all IP addresses on the machine, and makes the tool accessible on the wider network.

What you did in this tutorial

What to do next