Understanding APIs Through Context

By Jonathan Clarkin • January 30, 2014

This week I dove deep into understanding APIs through their context. The key questions driving my exploration: Who are the API consumers? What’s the minimum viable check for each endpoint? How do we ensure comprehensive coverage without over-testing?

Context changes everything in API testing. An internal microservice API has different reliability requirements than a public-facing REST API used by thousands of developers. The testing strategy must match the stakes.

The Critical Questions

  • Who consumes this API? Internal teams, external partners, or public developers each have different tolerance for downtime and breaking changes.
  • What are the core success scenarios? Not every endpoint deserves the same level of testing rigor.
  • How do users actually interact with this API? Testing isolated endpoints misses the real integration patterns.

We’re exploring a spectrum from lightweight functional tests that verify basic request/response patterns to comprehensive integration tests that simulate realistic usage flows.

The goal isn’t perfect test coverage - it’s strategic coverage that ensures our APIs are reliable, performant, and serve their intended purpose without wasting effort on unlikely edge cases.