On-The-Fly Mock JSON Server
$ npm install -g caddis
$ caddis -h
usage: caddis [action] [port]
Starts a server at http://localhost:<port> as a daemon, exposing an api to post JSON to in order to mock a RESTful service.
Defaults to port 3001 unless --port option provided.
actions:
start Start Caddis at http://localhost:<port>
stop Stop a previously started Caddis daemon
options:
-h Display this help menu
-p Desired port to start server on localhost
$ caddis start
$ curl -X POST -d '{"method":"GET", "uri":"/foo", "response":{"bar":"baz"}}' http://localhost:3001/api --header "Content-Type:application/json"
Visit http://localhost:3001/foo, prints:
{
bar: 'baz'
}
$ caddis stop
Visit http://localhost:3001/foo, Not Found.
A caddis is a moth-like insect often used as models for fly lures in fishing.
The caddis CLI tool is used to start and stop a RESTful JSON service with the ability to POST route configuration and responses, on-the-fly, for mocking and testing purposes.
It may be a stretch, but there's wit in there somewhere...
There are other projects I have been a part of, such as madmin, that allow for dynamically creating RESTful APIs through a User Interface and allows for persistance through I/O.
Recently, I was involved with mocking a service layer for unit testing purposes and found that the manual curation of such an API was too tedious for the task at hand - I wanted the process to be much more fluid and simple.
In this particular instance I needed to:
- Start a server in setup/before
- Dynamically add a route to the service with mock JSON response
- Run the test
- Shut down the server in teardown/after
Fairly simple, and most of all I didnt want any artifacts lying around - in other words I didn't need for any routes that I dynamically created to stick around on my local disk after the tests were done.
As such, caddis was born.
As mentioned briefly above, caddis is a CLI tool. It is recommended to install globally:
$ npm install -g caddis
: you may need to sudo
Once installed, you can start the service (currently defaults to http://localhost:3001) and begin POSTing route configurations in JSON. Here is an example using cUrl that dynamically adds a GET route at /foo with a simple JSON payload of {"bar":"baz"}:
$ curl -X POST -d '{"method":"GET", "uri":"/foo", "response":{"bar":"baz"}}' http://localhost:3001/api --header "Content-Type:application/json"
You are not confiuned to cUrl - you can use whatever networking library in whatever language you are writing your tests in and the server can handle all modern RESTful methods:
- GET
- POST
- PUT
- DELETE
When you are finished, simply stop the caddis server:
$ caddis stop
The post body data that is sent to caddis has the following properties:
- method: The REST method
- uri: The endpoint of the service to hit (requires prepended '/')
- response: The JSON object to return on request
- statusCode: [Optional] Status code to return. Defaults to 200
- delay: [Optional] Time delay, in milliseconds, to delay response. Defaults to NaN
$ npm run test
It is also possible to use caddis as a locally required module (as oppose to installing globally with -g):
$ npm install caddis
var caddis = require('caddis');
caddis.start(3002, function() {
// caddis started on http://localhost:3002
});
...
caddis.stop(function() {
// caddis stopped.
});
$ npm run test-module
Copyright (c) 2014 Todd Anderson
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