RESO Web API Commander

The RESO Web API Commander is a command line Java application that uses the Apache Olingo library to provide the following functionality:

• Getting Started
• Display Help
• Authentication
• Getting Metadata
• Validating Metadata stored in an EDMX file
• Getting results from a given uri
• Getting raw results from a given uri
• Converting metadata to Open API 2 format
• Running RESOScript Files
• Automated Web API Testing (beta)
  • Cucumber Feature Specifications
  • Testing Environment
  • Web API Usage
  • Web API Program Output
  • Gradle Commands
• Docker
• Logging
• Coming Soon

Getting Started

Download Commander JAR (Java 1.8.0+)

Your operating system probably already has Java 1.8.0 or greater.

To check, type:

$ java -version

in your operating system's terminal and you will see something similar to the following:

$ java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_242"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_242-8u242-b08-0ubuntu3~19.10-b08)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.242-b08, mixed mode)

If you don't see something similar to this, with 1.8.0 or greater, or an error, you may have to download a Java Runtime Environment.

Open JDK is recommended.

Oracle's SE Development kit may also be used, but there may be additional licensing terms to accept.

Display Help

Assuming you have downloaded web-api-commander.jar at this point, help is available from the command line by passing --help OR just passing no arguments.

/path/to/web-api-commander$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar

Doing so displays the following information:

usage: java -jar web-api-commander
    --bearerToken <b>       Bearer token to be used with the request.
    --contentType <t>       Results format: JSON (default),
                            JSON_NO_METADATA, JSON_FULL_METADATA, XML.
    --convertEDMXtoOAI      Converts EDMX in <inputFile> to OAI, saving it
                            in <inputFile>.swagger.json
    --entityName <n>        The name of the entity to fetch, e.g.
                            Property.
    --getEntities           Executes GET on <uri> using the given
                            <bearerToken> and optional <serviceRoot> when
                            --useEdmEnabledClient is specified. Optionally
                            takes a <limit>, which will fetch that number
                            of results. Pass --limit -1 to fetch all
                            results.
    --getMetadata           Fetches metadata from <serviceRoot> using
                            <bearerToken> and saves results in
                            <outputFile>.
    --help                  print help
    --inputFile <i>         Path to input file.
    --limit <l>             The number of records to fetch, or -1 to fetch
                            all.
    --outputFile <o>        Path to output file.
    --runRESOScript         Runs commands in RESOScript file given as
                            <inputFile>.
    --saveRawGetRequest     Performs GET from <requestURI> using the given
                            <bearerToken> and saves output to
                            <outputFile>.
    --serviceRoot <s>       Service root URL on the host.
    --uri <u>               URI for raw request. Use 'single quotes' to
                            enclose.
    --useEdmEnabledClient   present if an EdmEnabledClient should be used.
    --validateMetadata      Validates previously-fetched metadata in the
                            <inputFile> path.

When using commands, if arguments aren't provided, feedback will be displayed in the terminal, as well as the help screen, which will show how to pass each required argument.

Authentication

When using the Commader from the terminal, bearer tokens are the currently-supported authentication mechanism. Please see subsequent sections for how to use bearer tokens to accomplish tasks other than fully-automated testing, discussed elsewhere in this README.

Client credentials (OAuth2) are supported in RESOScript files. Please contact josh@reso.org if you are wanting certification using this mechanism. See generic.resoscript for client credentials parameters. Note that this has not been tested extensively and is in pre-alpha.

Getting Metadata

To get metadata, use the --getMetadata argument with the following options:

$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar --getMetadata --serviceRoot <s> --bearerToken <b> --outputFile <o>

where serviceRoot is the path to the root of the OData WebAPI server.

Assuming everything goes well, metadata will be retrieved from the host and written to the provided --outputFile.

Note: additional validation is done after metadata have been received. Errors in metadata won't cause the program to terminate, but validation information will be displayed. Also, it's worth mentioning that some of the validation error messages "out-of-the-box" from the Olingo Library we're using to validate with can be pretty cryptic. Please open an issue if you find things that need better explanations.

Validating Metadata stored in an EDMX file

Sometimes it's useful to validate an already-downloaded EDMX file.

Since parsing EDMX is an incremental process, validation terminates each time invalid items are encountered. Therefore, the workflow for correcting an EDMX document that contains errors would be to run the Commander repeatedly, fixing errors that are encountered along the way.

To validate metadata that's already been downloaded, call the Web API Commander with the following options:

$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar --validateMetadata --inputFile <i>

where inputFile is the path to your EDMX file. Errors will be logged according to the log4j.properties file used at runtime.

Getting results from a given uri

OData offers additional options for requesting data from a WebAPI server beyond just receiving the raw server response (shown in the next example).

In this case, the appropriate action is: --getEntities, which can be called as follows:

$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar --getEntities --uri <u> --bearerToken <b> --outputFile <o>

Make sure that any uri containing spaces or special characters is wrapped in 'single quotes'.

When using the --useEdmEnabledClient option, results will be verified against Server metadata after being downloaded. If this option is chosen, then --serviceRoot is required so that the Web API Commander can pull the Server's metadata in addition to the results from the given --uri

The getEntitySet action also supports the --contentType option, which will change how results are written. Currently supported options are: JSON, JSON_NO_METADATA, JSON_FULL_METADATA, and XML.

Finally, there's an "experimental" auto-paging option which allows all records to be pulled from the Server. In order to use this option, pass --limit -1 when using --getEntities. In the near future, an auto-resume feature will be added so that if something happens during transfer, the process will resume from the last record consumed.

Getting raw results from a given uri

If additional processing using the OData Olingo library is not needed, raw requests may be issued against the server instead.

The --saveRawGetRequest action writes the raw response from a GET request to the given --uri from the Web API server directly to the given --outputFile.

$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar --saveRawGetRequest --uri <u> --bearerToken <b> --outputFile <o>

Results are not checked against Server Metadata and are not written in any specific OData format.

Make sure that any uri containing spaces or special characters is wrapped in 'single quotes'.

Note: this option is currently being rolled into --getEntities with --contentType RAW. Documentation will be updated once the change has been made.

Converting metadata to Open API 2 format

The WebAPI Commander also supports converting files in EDMX format to OpenAPI / Swagger 2.0 format. This gives servers an alternative representation besides the OData-specific representation used by EDMX.

It's worth mentioning that translation from EDMX to OpenAPI/Swagger is lossy, meaning that some EDMX elements will not be translated. This is due to the fact that EDMX is more specific than OpenAPI, for instance with type representations like Integers.

The EDMX converter may be called as follows:

$ java -jar web-api-commander.jar --convertEDMXtoOAI --inputFile <i>

Any errors will be displayed, and the output file is automatically created by appending .swagger.json to the given EDMX inputFile name.

Running RESOScript Files

The Web API Commander is able to run RESO's XML-based scripting format, otherwise known as a RESOScript.

In order to run an RESOScript file, use a command similar to the following:

$ java -jar out/web-api-commander.jar --runRESOScript --i /path/to/your/inputFile --useEdmEnabledClient

Notice that the EDM Enabled client has been requested in the above command. This turns on strict OData checking, which performs additional validation on query strings as well as schema validation on responses, among other things. This feature is optional when using the --runRESOScript option, and may be omitted. The recommendation is to use it.

When executing the Web API Commander, a results directory will be created as a sibling to the RESOScript file being run, with the directory name being generated from the RESOScript filename and the current timestamp.

Within this directory will be a file for each RESOScript request that was run, and those that generated errors will have ".ERROR" appended to them. Error files contain the request that was made as well as the Java exception that was thrown, which most frequently comes from the underlying OLingo library and provides a sufficient amount of information to determine what occurred with the query.

For those wanting more information, a log4j.properties file may be created (as shown below), or you may use the DEBUG build of the application located in /build/libs/ identified by -DEBUG in the Commander jar's file name.

RESOScript files contain zero or more Settings, Parameters, and Requests. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <OutputScript>
     <ClientSettings>
       <ServerName></ServerName>
       <ServerId></ServerId>
       <WebAPIURI></WebAPIURI>
       <AuthorizationURI></AuthorizationURI>
       <TokenURI></TokenURI>
       <RedirectURI></RedirectURI>
       <AuthenticationType></AuthenticationType>
       <BearerToken></BearerToken>
       <ClientIdentification></ClientIdentification>
       <ClientSecret></ClientSecret>
       <UserName></UserName>
       <Password></Password>
       <ClientScope></ClientScope>
       <Version></Version>
       <Preauthenticate></Preauthenticate>
     </ClientSettings>
     <Parameters>
       <Parameter Name="YourEndpointUrl" Value="https://yourserver.com/api?$filter=..." />
     </Parameters>
     <Requests>
       <Request OutputFile="yourEndpointUrlResponse.json"         Url="*Parameter_YourEndpointUrl*" />
       <!-- ... additional requests -->    
     </Requests>
   </OutputScript>

The XML DTD for this schema is as follows:

<!DOCTYPE OutputScript [
  <!ELEMENT OutputScript (ClientSettings|Parameters|Requests)*>
  <!ELEMENT ClientSettings (WebAPIURI|AuthenticationType|BearerToken|ClientScope|Version|Preauthenticate)*>
  <!ELEMENT WebAPIURI (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT AuthenticationType (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT BearerToken (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT ClientScope (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT Version (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT Preauthenticate (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT Parameters (Parameter)*>
  <!ELEMENT Parameter (#PCDATA)>
  <!ATTLIST Parameter
    Name CDATA #REQUIRED
    Value CDATA #REQUIRED>
  <!ELEMENT Requests (Request)*>
  <!ELEMENT Request (#PCDATA)*>
  <!ATTLIST Request
    Capability CDATA #REQUIRED
    MetallicLevel CDATA #REQUIRED
    OutputFile CDATA #REQUIRED
    RequirementId CDATA #REQUIRED
    TestDescription CDATA #REQUIRED
    Url CDATA #REQUIRED
    WebAPIReference CDATA #REQUIRED>
  ]>

Automated Web API Testing (beta)

Currently in development is the ability for the Commander to be able to perform fully-automated Web API testing, upon being provided a valid RESOScript file with parameters for the given server. See the generic RESOScript template for more info.

Cucumber Feature Specifications

Cucumber is being used to describe acceptance criteria in a higher-level DSL rather than encapsulating all of the test logic code. Cucumber's DSL is called Gherkin and essentially allows backing test code to be organized in a logical manner that makes sense to analysts as well as programmers.

Testing output during runtime has been designed to be easy to read and during each step, the relevant output for the step will be displayed in the terminal or in an IDE if you have chosen to use the testing tool there. This can often be useful if debugging tests as a developer can step through backing test code as it's running and inspect requests and responses in a controlled manner.

Testing Environment

Under the hood, Gradle is being used for automation. It works across multiple platforms and is friendly with both Docker and Cucumber so that tests may be automated on CI/CD platforms such as Jenkins, Circle CI, Travis, or similar, and emit standard system codes during regression testing.

It also provides pleasing command line interaction, and plays well with Cucumber by supporting the ability to run individual or multiple tests using tags.

Web API Usage

The Commander may be run in automated testing mode for a Web API 1.0.2 Server Certification using a terminal. You do not need to use the Commander JAR file mentioned elsewhere in this step. Instead, you will run the tests using Gradle for automation against a clean copy of the latest Commander code.

You will need to download the source code so you can run Gradle in the root of the directory. This assumes that you also have Java 8 (1.8.0) or above installed, as mentioned elsewhere in this README.

First, change into the directory you want to work in and clone the Commander repository. You will need to have Git installed. Chances are you already do, to check, open a command line and type git and if it's present, it will print some info about the app. If not, there are instructions here.

MacOS or Linux

$ git clone https://github.com/RESOStandards/web-api-commander.git

Windows

C:\> git clone https://github.com/RESOStandards/web-api-commander.git

This will clone the repository into a directory called web-api-commander, which means you will have a fresh copy of the latest code to execute. To refresh the code after you have downloaded it, issue the command $ git pull in the root of the directory that was just created.

The Gradle wrapper provides a convenient way to automatically install Gradle when running tests. After you have cloned the repository, issuing the following command:

MacOS or Linux

$ ./gradlew testWebAPIServer_1_0_2 -DpathToRESOScript=/path/to/your.resoscript

Windows

C:\path\to\web-api-commander> gradlew.bat testWebAPIServer_1_0_2 -DpathToRESOScript=C:\path\to\your.resoscript

This will run the entirety of the tests against the Web API server provided as WebAPIURI in your.resoscript file. You can pass tags to filter on in order to run one or more tests matching the given tag.

Note that the first time you run this command, it will take some time to complete as Gradle will download all dependencies and compile the application before running the test suite. Note: this step will be Dockerized so it can be run with a single command in a Docker container in upcoming versions of the Commander.

To filter by tags, a command similar to the following would be used:

MacOS or Linux

$ gradle testWebAPIServer_1_0_2 -DpathToRESOScript=/path/to/your.resoscript -Dcucumber.filter.tags="@core"

Windows

C:\path\to\web-api-commander> gradlew.bat testWebAPIServer_1_0_2 -DpathToRESOScript=C:\path\to\your.resoscript -Dcucumber.filter.tags="@core"

This would run only the tests marked as @core in the Web API Server 1.0.2 .feature file.

There is still some "glue code" to back the test descriptions in .feature files, but it is greatly optimized by the use of cucumber-jvm, which has support for the reuse of backing Java code to cut down on copypasta test development.

The backing test code is done using JUnit5. Normally, only those who are contributing test code should need to know about the implementation details of how tests are run. Libraries necessary for the Commander to run are included in the web-api-commander.jar file, aside from Gradle, which may either be installed on the local machine, or used within a Docker container (coming soon).

Note: tests are currently tagged with their Web API version being 1.0.3, such as @REQ-WA103-END3, but the tests currently being run on the server for Web API 1.0.2 is the backwards-compatible subset of Web API 1.0.3 tests. Tags are still a work in progress, and are being added for Web API 1.0.2 tests as well. Please feel free to suggest additional tags that might be useful.

Web API Program Output

A sample of the runtime terminal output follows:

    @REQ-WA103-END3 @core @x.y.z @core-support-endorsement
    Scenario: REQ-WA103-END3 - CORE - Request and Validate Server Metadata   
    
    Using RESOScript: /path/to/your.resoscript
      Given a RESOScript file was provided                                   
    
    RESOScript loaded successfully!
      And Client Settings and Parameters were read from the file             
    
    Bearer token loaded... first 4 characters: abcd
    Service root is: https://api.server.com/serviceRoot
      And an OData client was successfully created from the given RESOScript 
    
    Request URI: https://api.server.com/serviceRoot/$metadata?$format=application/xml
    Request succeeded...185032 bytes received.
      When a GET request is made to the resolved Url in "REQ-WA103-END3"     
    
    Response code is: 200
      Then the server responds with a status code of 200                     
    
    Response is valid XML!
      And the response is valid XML                                          
    
    Metadata is valid!
      And the metadata returned is valid   

This shows configuration parameters, requests, and responses in a lightweight-manner.

Detailed information will be added to a local ./commander.log file at runtime.

Gradle Commands

The list of available gradle commands can be shown by typing the following in the console:

$ gradle --help

These commands should not be necessary for the normal use of the Commander. There are a handful that are, however,

• --continue Continue task execution after a task failure.
• -S, --full-stacktrace Print out the full (very verbose) stacktrace for all exceptions.
• -s, --stacktrace Print out the stacktrace for all exceptions.
• -t, --continuous Enables continuous build. Gradle does not exit and will re-execute tasks when task file inputs change. [incubating]

Docker

A Dockerfile has been provided to dockerize the application. This can be used for CI/CD environments such as Jenkins or TravisCI. The following command will build an image for you:

$ docker build -t darnjo/web-api-command .

The usage for the docker container is the same for web-api-commander.jar presented above.

$ docker run -it darnjo/web-api-commander --help

If you have input files you may need to mount your filesystem into the docker container

$ docker run -it -v $PWD:/app darnjo/web-api-commander --validateMetadata --inputFile <pathInContainer>

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Logging

In the current version of the Commander, two logs are produced. One is outputted in the terminal at INFO level during runtime through stdout. A detailed log called commander.log will be outputted at runtime and will contain details down to the wire requests.

Log4j 2 is being used under the hood for logging, and a configuration file may be found here. Multiple outputs may be used, including posting to collectors or sending emails. See Log4j 2 docs for more info.

Gradle may be debugged as well, and additional gradle commands such as turning on full gradle step logging are discussed in Gradle Commands.

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Please contact josh@reso.org with any questions, bug reports, or feature requests.

Coming Soon

• Fully-automated Data Dictionary certification (in-progress)
• Support for authentication options in addition to Bearer tokens (Client Credentials in beta, please email for more info).
• Parallel fetch for replication
• Job Scheduling
• Excel export