Why do you need to mock API?
What if you are a software engineer developing some client app, for instance web or mobile. And everything goes well until you get to the point where you need to have the real web services in order to continue app development, integration and laying out things. But those web services that you require from the back-end team or a 3rd party are still not available. All thanks to agile. But if talking seriously, either you should find some other tasks or alternatively you can look into data mocks or dummy data providers that will allow you to keep going with your app development. And there are plenty of data mocking options, starting from very simple options like the local files or some temporary methods in your app that return dummy data. And going further, there are more robust and flexible options like mock data local web servers or online api mocking tools. In this review we will stop on the last option and particularly in my opinion on one of the best dummy API or fake APIs providers QuickMocker.
An intro to QuickMocker
First of all this is a free API mocking tool. Obviously it has some premium features, but most likely it has 99% of what you need inside the basic free subscription plan (and by the way, no need for any credit cards).
So, after a very simple registration, you can create your dummy API project or in other words a collection of your API stubs or your API prototype. The project gets its own randomly allocated subdomain which is your endpoints base URL. By the way, you can set your own subdomain name with the premium subscription… but do you really need it?
When you open your project, you’ll end-up on the simple and intuitive screen with just 2 tabs: Endpoints and Requests Log. From the endpoints tab you can start creating and managing dummy API endpoints. And on the Requests Log tab you’ll see immediately in live mode all the requests made to the fake API endpoints by your app. By clicking each record, you can expand all the details like request method, status, request and response headers and body. All of this is good, but there are tools already that have a similar set of features. So, what’s all about this QuickMocker?
Unique Features
Except for a friendly and intuitive UI, QuickMocker has one really handy feature for back-end developers which is not available in any other API mocking software. It is the requests forwarding or as they call it Local Forwarder. You might think that this is a simple proxy, which is present in many other fake API tools. But, it’s actually not a proxy that you are thinking about. It works on the browser level, not server. After the request to your API stub is captured by QuickMocker’s Requests Log, it can be forwarded to any other URL, including your localhost. This feature is really helpful if you are working on the webhooks testing and integration on the local environment and your app is not reachable by 3rd parties yet. Just give it a try and I’m pretty sure you’ll find it very useful. You can forward the same request multiple times from QuickMocker and debug it in your app. No need to trigger the event notification from the 3rd party over and over again.
Another very important feature is Shortcodes for response templating. QuickMocker has around 100 of those that can generate contextual, random or faker data. OK, response templating is present in other API mocking tools. But what is unique about QuickMocker is that it allows you to cache the response to persist the fake or random information.
Another nice and handy feature is the code editor for a dummy endpoint response headers and body. Select your preferred response content type and QuickMocker turns on the highlighting and code autocompletion similar to any IDE or code editor.
Extra Observations
QuickMocker is a relatively new tool for API mocking or API prototyping. It was released in May, 2020 according to its first blog article. As an independent software engineer I’ve started to use it in October 2020 when they had only one free subscription plan available. During this period they have greatly extended functionality by improving local forwarder, adding endpoint proxy and restrictions, providing a huge set of random and faker shortcodes for response templating together with a caching option, code editor for a fake API endpoint response headers and body. The UI and performance got far better. The premium subscriptions were released, so now I can increase my requests quotas, though for now I’m pretty good with a free plan. Finally the live chat support was introduced, even for free users.
Conclusions
Does not matter if you are a back-end or front-end developer, because all of us are “agile”, sooner or later you’ll need to use some API mocking approach in order to “unblock” your tasks and continue app development without having to wait for the real API. QuickMocker could be a good starting point for those who begin their API stubbing journey or else it could be a great level-up for those who already have experience with the similar API mocking tools. So, give it a try. Go to https://quickmocker.com, create a free account and see all by yourself!