World’s Best API Monitoring & IoT Testing, Free for Everyone!

  July 02, 2015

This is a truly happy day here at SmartBear, when we get to announce that our existing open source API testing tool, SoapUI, and our own AlertSite monitoring platform are now integrated directly in SoapUI 5.2.

SoapUI 5.2 and AlertSite: Better Together

What does this mean for users? It means that 1.2 million SoapUI open source users now have the ability to make sure their APIs are working as expected in production, seamlessly, with an AlertSite free account. It means that people can use the same API tests to monitor their live systems. It means that developers, testers, and operations have a free way to compare apples to apples metrics.

It means that you now have the most powerful API testing and monitoring tools in the industry at your disposal, without having to approve budget first. This is going to make you look really good.

Firstly, an API test in SoapUI can be as simple as an endpoint ping or as elaborate as a multi-step exchange between APIs and endpoints. This is what testers have to simulate, so why not reuse it as a monitor check later on?

As in the example on the left, you can use either tests containing a single request (Simple Endpoint) or as more often is the case you can use tests containing multiple test steps (Multistep) as part of a logical workflow or long-running business transaction.

This gives you the freedom to accurately simulate whatever pattern of requests you want to use against your API, including custom scripts and other types of mixed testing steps you may require.

Once you select a test case, simply click the “Monitor APIs” button on the SoapUI action toolbar:

Action Toolbar in SoapUI 5.2 Now Includes API Monitoring

Of course, you’ll need to sign up for a free account with AlertSite, but the good news is: it’s free! Once you enter your login credentials to the API monitoring screen, you’ll see something like this:

 

AlertSite API Monitoring is Fully Integrated into SoapUI 5.2

API Monitoring by AlertSite - New in SoapUI 5.2Simply click the ‘Add Monitor’ button, give your monitor a name, specify a test interval (e.g. every 5 min), then click the add button. Up in your AlertSite account, you soon begin to see the performance data rolling in after a few minutes.

 

Testing the Internet of Things with MQTT

We also are pleased to include the efforts of our work to produce an IoT testing plugin, built under the guidance of the MQTT team. As the Internet of Things explodes with new devices and challenges, SmartBear’s SoapUI is already on top of the game, helping you deliver high quality IoT experiences that are backed by mixed environment automated testing over devices and APIs.

Get Up and Running Fast with SoapUI + Swagger

Likewise, the Swagger team has updated their SoapUI plugin to support version 2.0 of the Swagger spec, a leap in the right direction for enterprises already using the industry’s most popular API description format and SmartBear products together to rapidly develop, test, and ship great software. This new support allows you to import Swagger documents as Project interfaces for immediate use in testing and mocking. Either start with an existing SoapUI project to export Swagger to other teams and business units, or import the Swagger description of your API(s) and use it as the basis for building out your REST-based API tests quickly.

None of these significant improvements would be possible without the amazing feedback we receive from the open source community and the hard work from the teams here at SmartBear as well as our dedicated partners. Many of the features in this release are a direct result of our efforts to improve the commercial API Readiness products in the Ready! API platform. If you like what’s in SoapUI open source, you should definitely check out SoapUI NG Pro, the successor to SoapUI Pro.