5 Approaches for Automating Microservices Testing

Microservices are used in applications to divide the application functionality into separate services, independently deployed and updated. These microservices must be tested to ensure their functionality is working fine. And in this article, let’s have a look at some different techniques for automated microservices testing.

But let us first understand in depth what microservices mean.

What are Microservices?

Microservices is a software development architecture in which applications are composed of small, independent processes communicating with each other using language-agnostic APIs and protocols. These services can be independently developed, deployed, and scaled as the application evolves.

The microservice architectural style aims to improve software engineering by enabling teams to deliver business functionality in short cycles, allowing continuous delivery of potentially releasable functionality throughout the development process. Microservices also allows an organization to evolve its technology stack through “bottom-up” adoption.

Having understood what microservices means, let’s have a look at five different approaches for automating microservices testing.

Top 5 approaches to Automate Microservices Testing

1. Shift Right Testing: We are gradually moving away from the world of complex systems and toward one where we may form connections with interesting ones. By splitting these complex systems down into small bits, microservices make them more scalable. Microservices design produces fluid, dynamic relationships that can only be understood through real-world testing. Testing in production, often known as shift-right testing, increases the overall quality of microservices-based programs. Shift-right testing reduces the uncertainty by allowing testers to see how their apps will function and be consumed once released.
2. Contract Testing: Contract testing is a way to test the interactions between components. By capturing the interactions that are exchanged between each service and storing them, you can verify that each component can work with another. 

Contract tests are a way to test the behavior of your software, and they can be run quickly and don’t need to integrate into external systems or databases to run. Contract testing advocates for better internal microservices design and more confidence that the systems you integrate with will be compatible with your code before releasing it.

3. End-to-end testing: End-to-end testing is a term that refers to the process of testing from beginning to end. End-to-end testing ensures that the entire process, including all service and database interactions, runs smoothly. Testing actions that touch several services thoroughly guarantees that the system functions as a whole and meets all requirements. 

4. Integration Testing: Integration testing validates that microservices can work together as intended to serve a greater business purpose. Integration testing also reveals bugs that a microservice might have by testing the communication path through a subsystem, thus improving interaction with its peers. During an integration test, a request is sent to multiple services at once. The user typically traces these requests to make sure they come back with a response. This ensures that one of the most essential functionalities of service-to-service testing, i.e., tracing, is fulfilled successfully.

5. Unit Testing: Unit testing makes it more comfortable to test each microservice independently. Each time you make a new change in the microservice, you only need to run a unit test, and that would suffice to check if the change works as intended. So ideally, this saves you from checking the entire application.

Microservices and unit testing together assist testers in minimising false positives, speeding up testing, and limiting the scope of testing. Microservices require unit tests because they offer testers with both motif and speed.

Conclusion: A microservice is a single unit of deployment, which can be tested individually. There are many different techniques to test these microservices. All of the microservices testing approaches discussed here help improve the quality and functionality of your application.