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Betamocks

Introduction

Betamocks is a Faraday middleware gem that mocks APIs by recording and replaying requests. It's especially useful for local development to mock out APIs that are behind a VPN, often go down, or when an API may not have a corresponding dev or staging environment. Mockdata for vets-api is in https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-api-mockdata

See also: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-api-mockdata#create-mock-data-for-a-brand-new-service

Setup

  1. cd to parent directory of vets-api and clone vets-api-mockdata, e.g. if you checked out vets-api to ~/Documents then:

CODE
cd ~/Documents
git clone git@github.com:department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-api-mockdata.git
  1. If you're using Docker there is no step 2 run make up to start vets-api. If you're not on Docker set the cache dir to the relative path of the mock data repo in config/development.yml file, you may need to run bin/spring stop for the change to take effect.

CODE
betamocks:
  enabled: true
  recording: false
  # the cache dir depends on how you run the api, run `bin/spring stop` after switching this setting
  cache_dir: ../vets-api-mockdata # via rails; e.g. bundle exec rails s or bundle exec rails c
  #cache_dir: /cache # via docker; e.g. make up or make console
  services_config: config/betamocks/services_config.yml

Lighthouse devs can begin making api requests. Va.gov devs, with access to va.gov-team-sensitive repository, can now login with one of the the test users without being connect to the VA VPN. By default all users have been mocked for MVI but only M. Webb (vets.gov.user+228@gmail.com) will work for the other services unless their mock data has been added.

Mocking a Service

If a service class implements response middleware, it is important to consider the order in which the middleware is stacked. For further details, refer to the Faraday API documentation.

In the following example, Betamocks will only record the raw response from the backing service, and will not record any transformations applied by the ::FacilityParser or ::FacilityValidator middlewares.

CODE
def connection
  Faraday.new(base_path, headers: base_request_headers, request: request_options) do |conn|
    conn.use :breakers
    conn.request :json
    
    conn.response :raise_error, error_prefix: service_name
    conn.response :facility_parser
    conn.response :facility_validator
    conn.response :betamocks if Settings.locators.mock_gis
    
    conn.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
  end
end
  1. Add endpoints to be mocked to the services config file. Each service description has a base_uri (pulled from Settings) endpoints is an array of hashes with:

  • method: a symbol of the http verb :get:post:put...

  • path: the path that combined with the base_uri makes a full URI

  • file_path: where to save the file (relative to betamocks' cache dir)

CODE
:services:

# EVSS::PCIUAddress
- :base_uri: <%= URI(Settings.evss.url).host %>
  :endpoints:
  - :method: :get
    :path: "/wss-pciu-services-web/rest/pciuServices/v1/states"
    :file_path: "evss/pciu_address"
  1. In config/settings.yml set betamocks recording to true:

CODE
betamocks:
  enabled: true
  recording: true
  1. Make a request. If a cache file does not exist one will be recorded (turn on your VA VPNs), all subsequent requests will use the cache (feel free to turn off your VA VPNs).

Mocking error responses

You can record an error response or edit one manually to return an error status, or you can turn errors on and off by adding an error key to the config with an optional body. Restart rails after updating the service config:

CODE
- :method: :get
  :path: "/wss-pciu-services-web/rest/pciuServices/v1/states"
  :file_path: "evss/pciu_address"
  :error: 400
- :method: :get
  :path: "/wss-pciu-services-web/rest/pciuServices/v1/states"
  :file_path: "evss/pciu_address"
  :error: 420
  :body: '{"key": "letter.generator.error", "message": "the letter generator hamsters have fallen asleep"}'

Caching mulitple responses

To record multiple responses for a URI you can add a wildcard in place of the identifier and add a matching locator or in the case of endpoints that use header or body values for identifiers you can write a locator that will be appended to the cache file name. query and header uid_location types use named locators, url and body types use regular expression matchers to extract locators:

For query string identifiers

The below will record /users?uuid=abc123 and /users?uuid=efg456 to the same directory:

CODE
:endpoints:
  - :method: :get
    :path: "/users"
    :file_path: "users/list"
    :cache_multiple_responses:
      :uid_location: query
      :uid_locator: 'uuid'

For header identifiers

The below will record all /evss/address responses with different identifiers in the request headers to the same directory:

CODE
:endpoints:
  - :method: :get
    :path: "/evss/address"
    :file_path: "evss/address"
    :cache_multiple_responses:
      :uid_location: header
      :uid_locator: 'va_eauth_pnid'

For URL identifiers

The below will record /users/42/forms and /users/101/forms to the same directory:

CODE
:endpoints:
  - :method: :get
    :path: "/users/*/forms"
    :file_path: "users/form"
    :cache_multiple_responses:
      :uid_location: url
      :uid_locator: '\/users\/(.+)\/forms' # matches anything '(.+)' between /users and /forms

For request body identifiers

The below will record all /mvi/find_profile responses with different identifiers in the XML request bodies to the same directory:

CODE
:endpoints:
  - :method: :post
    :path: "/mvi/find_profile"
    :file_path: "mvi/profiles"
    :cache_multiple_responses:
      :uid_location: body
      :uid_locator: '(?:root="2.16.840.1.113883.4.1" )?extension="(\d{9})"(?: root="2.16.840.1.113883.4.1")?' 
      extension=

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