Automating gRPC Services Testing with ACCELQ

gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Call) is a high-performance, open-source framework that enables remote procedure calls (RPC) between distributed systems. It is widely used for building scalable and efficient APIs. Testing gRPC services is crucial to ensure the reliability and performance of these APIs.

ACCELQ provides powerful capabilities for codeless automation of gRPC services, enabling test automation engineers to define, execute, and verify gRPC requests efficiently. This guide will help you understand how to set up and use ACCELQ for automating gRPC testing, leveraging its support for handling JSON responses.

Preparing Proto Definitions

Before you can automate gRPC on ACCELQ, it is required to generate Java sources from the proto definition files. Here is an article for this initial setup.

Setting Up gRPC Connection

Command: Define a gRPC Connection

To start with gRPC automation, you need to define a gRPC connection. This involves specifying a reference name, channel URL, source path, and optionally, a package name.

Parameters:

• Reference Name: Reference name given to the gRPC connection.
• Channel URL: Channel URL for resolving the gRPC requests.
• Source Path: Path containing the generated Java source files from the proto schema. Ensure this path is available on the Agent machine during test execution.
• Package Name (Optional): Java package name specified in the proto definition (using the "java_package" option in the proto file). If the "java_package" option is not defined, this field can be ignored.

Executing gRPC Requests

Command: Execute gRPC Request

Once the connection is defined, you can execute gRPC requests by specifying the RPC endpoint, service name, and optional JSON payload.

Parameters:

• RPC Endpoint: RPC endpoint name as per the proto definition.
• Service Name: Name of the service containing the RPC endpoint as per the proto definition.
• Payload (Optional): Payload in JSON format, if the invoked endpoint requires it.
• Payload Schema: Schema name for the request payload to send, as per the proto definition.

Returns: The response body in JSON format.

Switching gRPC Connections

Command: Switch to gRPC Connection

You can switch between different gRPC connections by specifying the reference name of the desired connection.

Parameters:

• Reference Name: Reference name of the gRPC connection to switch to.

Parsing and Verifying JSON Responses

After executing a gRPC request, the response is returned in JSON format. ACCELQ provides comprehensive capabilities to parse and verify these JSON responses.

Here is a detailed article.