How to Post a JSON Request in a Few Steps

In my last few posts we went over getting started with rest-assured and how to get request using the new given, when, then syntax — now that we have some get request method examples under our belt I wanted to take a look at a few examples of using Rest-Assured to test JSON REST services using the POST method.

Table of Contents

Setup – CouchDB

To make this example as easy as possible and not have to setup any sort of authentication, I’ll use Apache couchDB. CouchDB is easy to install, stores data as JSON documents and has an easy-to-use API to interact with it. This makes it a great application to use to teach us more about REST testing rest-assured and JSON.

To install couchDB go to:

http://couchdb.apache.org/
Click on Download and choose the version you want to us
Once it’s installed, enter http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils/ in a browser. This should bring up your local CouchDB Futton web site.
Next, click on the Create Database and name it “restassured”

Navigate back to http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils/index.html. Notice that restassured shows 0 docs.

You can also check out my SoapUI – How to Post Json to a Rest Service video for how to install couchDB.

Time to use Rest-Assured to Send a Post Request

For some reason, I had a hard time figuring out how to do this. Whatever the reason, I finally got it to work. Remember — I’m still learning this myself, and posting what I’m learning along the way. There may be better way of doing it, but for now I’m sharing what worked for me to hopefully help get you started if you’re also struggling to get the POST to work.

In your IDE, create a new java class named CouchDB_REST
Import the following:

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.Before;
import static com.jayway.restassured.RestAssured.expect;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.equalTo;

Create a public method named postExample
Add the junit @Test annotation above it.

        @Test
	public void postExample()
	{
	String myJson = "{"name":"Jimi Hendrix"}";
    	RestAssured.baseURI  = "http://127.0.0.1:5984/restassured";	

    	Response r = given()
    	.contentType("application/json").
    	body("{"name":"Jimi Hendrix"}").
        when().
        post("");

    	String body = r.getBody().asString();
    	System.out.println(body);

	}

Right click on the CouchDB_REST.java and Run As>Junit Test
Your test should pass

Look for the id in the Console output:

Go back to couchDB: http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils/index.html
Notice how your restassured now shows Number of Documents 1
Click on the restassured db link and notice how the ID under the key column matches the id returned in the java console

Setup – CouchDB

Time to use Rest-Assured to Send a Post Request

More Rest-Assured Post