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Regunath B edited this page Feb 1, 2019 · 5 revisions

Testing

Tooling support for testing services implemented on gRPC continues to evolve. This pages provides recommendations for testing tools.

Performance testing

Locust is a great tool for generating load for testing individual services and composite flows - for e.g. simulating user login and accessing a bunch of features on a Product page that results in calls to a number of services. gRPC IDLs can be compiled to Python client code ( See Python support in gRPC ) that can be seamlessly integrated with Locust scripts.

Integration testing

Integration testing is primarily for validating contracts between services. Tools like Postman and Swagger substantially reduce testing time of REST based JSON/Http1.x services.

The choice of integration testing tools is driven by these philosophies, consistent with GJEX goals:

  • Support for testing services using JSON/Http1.x
  • Zero or minimal effort in on-boarding a new service for testing
  • Zero modifications to gRPC IDL or code and no additional compilation steps to support testing
  • Preferably disconnect the testing interface(Text based protocol) from production (Binary protocol)

Testing using Envoy Reverse Proxy

Exposing gRPC services as JSON over Http explains how a gRPC service can be exposed as a JSON/Http API using the Envoy reverse proxy. Following this setup, a gRPC service can be tested using standard tools like Postman.

Testing using Polyman

The steps below explain how gRPC services can be tested using Postman:

  • Fork & compile or install the Polyman binary
  • Polyman uses Polyglot under the hood. Polygot requires access to the gRPC service definition IDL .proto files. This can be configured via Http headers as explained in following steps.
  • Run the Polyman binary with no arguments. This brings up the proxy on localhost and port 8000
  • Configure the Polyman proxy in Postman under Settings -> Proxy -> Enable "Global Proxy Configuration" -> Add localhost:8000
  • Configure the Http Header "x-polyman-root" and point it to the local location of the gRPC .proto IDL files like below:
* Execute a POST request on the sample Greeter service using JSON request data to get a JSON response message like below:

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