README.md

stubby4j

A highly flexible & configurable tool for testing interactions of SOA applications with web services (REST, SOAP, WSDL etc.) over HTTP(S) protocol. It is an actual HTTP server (stubby4j uses embedded Jetty) that acts like a real web service, ready for consumption by your code. Allows stubbing of external systems with ease for integration testing

Why the word "stubby"?

It is a stub HTTP server after all, hence the "stubby". Also, in Australian slang "stubby" means beer bottle

User manual for stubby4j v2.0.21

Table of contents

• Key features
• Why would a developer use stubby4j
• Why would a QA use stubby4j
• Building
• Third-party dependencies
• Adding stubby4j to your project
• Command-line switches
• Endpoint configuration HOWTO
  • Request
  • Response
  • Callback
  • Record and Play
  • Dynamic token replacement in stubbed response
• The admin portal
• The stubs portal
• Programmatic API
• Change log
• Roadmap
• Authors
• Kudos
• See also

Key features

• Emulate external webservice in a SANDBOX for your application to consume over HTTP(S)
• HTTP request verification and HTTP response stubbing
• Regex support for dynamic matching on URI, query params, headers, POST body (ie:. mod_rewrite in Apache)
• Dynamic token replacement in stubbed response, by leveraging regex capturing groups as token values during HTTP request verification
• Record & Replay. The HTTP response is recorded on the first call, having the subsequent calls play back the recorded HTTP response, without actually connecting to the external server
• Dynamic flows. Multiple stubbed responses on the same stubbed URI to test multiple application flows
• Fault injection, where after X good responses on the same URI you get a bad one
• Serve binary files as stubbed response content (images, PDFs. etc.)
• Embed stubby4j to create a web service SANDBOX for your integration test suite
• Over 98% test coverage (the percentile alone should not be taken as an indicator of test quality, but nevertheless - the library is thoroughly tested)

Why would a developer use stubby4j?

####You want to:

• Simulate responses from real server and don't care (or cannot) to go over the network
• Third party web service your application suppose to contract with is not ready yet
• Verify that your code makes HTTP requests with all the required parameters and/or headers
• Verify that your code correctly handles HTTP error codes
• You want to trigger response from the server based on the request parameters over HTTP or HTTPS
• Support for any of the available HTTP methods
• Simulate support for Basic Authorization
• Support for HTTP 30x redirects
• Provide canned answers in your contract/integration tests
• Enable delayed responses for performance and stability testing
• Avoid to spend time coding for the above requirements
• Concentrate on the task at hand

Why would a QA use stubby4j?

• Specifiable mock responses to simulate page conditions without real data.
• Ability to test polling mechanisms by stubbing a sequence of responses for the same URI
• Easily swappable data config files to run different data sets and responses.
• All-in-one stub server to handle mock data with less need to upkeep code for test generation

All this goodness in just under 1.5MB

Building

stubby4j is a multi-module Gradle project

• IntelliJ IDEA users should run gradle cleanIdea idea in order to generate IntelliJ IDEA project files
• Eclipse users should run gradle cleanEclipse eclipse in order to generate Eclipse project files

Run gradle command to:

• Clean
• Run unit, integration and functional tests without Cobertura
• Build (the generated stubby4j-x.x.x-SNAPSHOT.jar will be located under main/target/libs/)

Run gradle build -x test command to:

• Clean
• Build (the generated stubby4j-x.x.x-SNAPSHOT.jar will be located under main/target/libs/)

Run gradle cobertura command to:

• Clean
• Generate Cobertura report under the main module

Run gradle clean check command to:

• Clean
• Generate PMD report under the main module
• Generate JDepend report under the main module
• Generate Cobertura report under the main module

Third-party dependencies

stubby4j is a fat JAR, which contains the following dependencies:

• commons-cli-1.2.jar
• snakeyaml-1.13.jar
• javax.servlet-3.0.0.v201112011016.jar
• jetty-server-8.1.7.v20120910.jar
• jetty-continuation-8.1.7.v20120910.jar
• jetty-util-8.1.7.v20120910.jar
• jetty-io-8.1.7.v20120910.jar
• jetty-http-8.1.7.v20120910.jar

Adding stubby4j to your project

stubby4j is hosted on Maven Central and can be added as a dependency in your project's build script. Keep in mind that it takes 5-8 hours for a new release to appear on live Maven Central repo. In other words, if you cannot fetch v.2.0.21 as a dependency yet, it means Maven Central has not been synced yet ;)

Apache Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>by.stub</groupId>
    <artifactId>stubby4j</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.21</version>
</dependency>

Apache Ivy

<dependency org="by.stub" name="stubby4j" rev="2.0.21" />

Apache Buildr

'by.stub:stubby4j:jar:2.0.21'

Gradle

compile 'by.stub:stubby4j:2.0.21'

Scala SBT

libraryDependencies += "by.stub" % "stubby4j" % "2.0.13"

Command-line switches

usage:
       java -jar stubby4j-2.0.21.jar [-a <arg>] [-d <arg>] [-h] [-k <arg>]
       [-l <arg>] [-m] [-p <arg>] [-s <arg>] [-t <arg>] [-v] [-w]
 -a,--admin <arg>      Port for admin portal. Defaults to 8889.
 -d,--data <arg>       Data file to pre-load endpoints. Valid YAML 1.1
                       expected.
 -h,--help             This help text.
 -k,--keystore <arg>   Keystore file for custom TLS. By default TLS is
                       enabled using internal keystore.
 -l,--location <arg>   Hostname at which to bind stubby.
 -m,--mute             Prevent stubby from printing to the console.
 -p,--password <arg>   Password for the provided keystore file.
 -s,--stubs <arg>      Port for stub portal. Defaults to 8882.
 -t,--tls <arg>        Port for TLS connection. Defaults to 7443.
 -v,--version          Prints out to console stubby version.
 -w,--watch            Periodically scans for changes in last modification
                       date of the main YAML and referenced external files
                       (if any). The flag can accept an optional arg value
                       which is the watch scan time in milliseconds. If
                       milliseconds is not provided, the watch scans every
                       100ms. If last modification date changed since the
                       last scan period, the stub configuration is
                       reloaded

Endpoint configuration HOWTO

This section explains the usage, intent and behavior of each property on the request and response objects.

Here is a fully-populated, unrealistic endpoint:

-  request:
      url: ^/your/awesome/endpoint$
      method: POST
      query:
         exclamation: post requests can have query strings!
      headers:
         content-type: application/xml
      post: >
         <!xml blah="blah blah blah">
         <envelope>
            <unaryTag/>
         </envelope>
      file: tryMyFirst.xml

   response:
      status: 200
      latency: 5000
      headers:
         content-type: application/xml
         server: stubbedServer/4.2
      body: >
         <!xml blah="blah blah blah">
         <responseXML>
            <content></content>
         </responseXML>
      file: responseData.xml

Request

This object is used to match an incoming request to stubby against the available endpoints that have been configured.

url (required)

• is a full-fledged regular expression
• This is the only required property of an endpoint.
• signify the url after the base host and port (i.e. after localhost:8882).
• must begin with /.
• any query paramters are stripped (so don't include them, that's what query is for).
  • /url?some=value&another=value becomes /url
• no checking is done for URI-encoding compliance.
  • If it's invalid, it won't ever trigger a match.

This is the simplest you can get:

-  request:
      url: /

A demonstration when not using regular expressions:

-  request:
      url: /some/resource/that/will/be/fully/matched

A demonstration using regular expressions:

-  request:
      url: ^/has/to/begin/with/this/

-  request:
      url: /has/to/end/with/this/$

-  request:
      url: ^/must/be/this/exactly/with/optional/trailing/slash/?$

-  request:
      url: ^/[a-z]{3}-[a-z]{3}/[0-9]{2}/[A-Z]{2}/[a-z0-9]+$

method

• defaults to GET.
• case-insensitive.
• can be any of the following:
  • HEAD
  • GET
  • POST
  • PUT
  • POST
  • DELETE
  • etc.

-  request:
      url: /anything
      method: GET

• it can also be an array of values.

-  request:
      url: /anything
      method: [GET, HEAD]

-  request:
      url: /anything
      method:
         -  GET
         -  HEAD

query

• can be a full-fledged regular expression
• if not stubbed, stubby ignores query parameters on incoming request and will match only request URL
• stubby accommodates for HTTP requests that contain query string params with no values
• query params can be specified regardless of their order in incoming request. In other words - order agnostic
• query params can also be an array with double/single quoted/un-quoted elements: attributes=["id","uuid"] or attributes=[id,uuid]. Please note no spaces between the CSV

-  request:
      method: GET
      url: ^/with/parameters$
      query:
         type_name: user
         client_id: id
         client_secret: secret
         random_id: "^sequence/-/\\d/"
         session_id: "^user_\\d{32}_local"
         attributes: '["id","uuid","created","lastUpdated","displayName","email","givenName","familyName"]'

• The following will match either of these:
  • /with/parameters?search=search+terms&filter=month
  • /with/parameters?filter=month&search=search+terms

-  request:
      url: ^/with/parameters$
      query:
         search: search terms
         filter: month

• The following will match either of these:
  • /with/parameters?search&filter=month
  • /with/parameters?search=&filter=month

-  request:
      url: ^/with/parameters$
      query:
         search:
         filter: month

post

• Represents the body POST of incoming request, ie.: form data
• can be a full-fledged regular expression
• if not stubbed, any POSTed data on incoming request is ignored

-  request:
      url: ^/post/form/data$
      post: name=John&[email protected]

-  request:
      method: [POST]
      url: /uri/with/post/regex
      post: "^[\\.,'a-zA-Z\\s+]*$"

-  request:
      url: ^/post/form/data$
      post: "^this/is/\\d/post/body"

file

• holds a path to a local file (absolute or relative to the YAML specified in -d or --data)
• if supplied, replaces post with the contents from the provided file
• if the local file could not be loaded for whatever reason (ie.: not found), stubby falls back to post for matching.
• allows you to split up stubby data across multiple files instead of making one huge bloated main YAML
• please keep in mind: SnakeYAML library (used by stubby4j) parser ruins multi-line strings by not preserving system line breaks. If file property is stubbed, the file content is loaded as-is, in other words - it does not go through SnakeYAML parser. Therefore it's better to load big POST content for request using file property. Keep in mind, stubby4j stub server is dumb and does not use smart matching mechanism (i.e.: don't match line separators or don't match any white space characters) - whatever you stubbed, must be POSTed exactly for successful match. Alternatively you can consider using regular expression in post

-  request:
      url: ^/match/against/file$
      file: postedData.json
      post: '{"fallback":"data"}'

postedData.json

{"fileContents":"match against this if the file is here"}

• if postedData.json doesn't exist on the filesystem when /match/against/file is matched in incoming request, stubby will match post contents against {"fallback":"data"} (from post) instead.

headers

• can be a full-fledged regular expression
• if not stubbed, stubby ignores headers on incoming request and will match only request URL
• if stubbed, stubby will try to match only the supplied headers and will ignore other headers of incoming request. In other words, the incoming request must contain stubbed header values
• headers are case-insensitive during matching
• a hashmap of header/value pairs similar to query.

The following endpoint only accepts requests with application/json post values:

-  request:
      url: /post/json
      method: post
      headers:
         content-type: application/json
         x-custom-header: "^this/is/\d/test"
         x-custom-header-2: "^[a-z]{4}_\\d{32}_(local|remote)"

Response

Assuming a match has been made against the given request object, data from response is used to build the stubbed response back to the client.

• Can be a single response or a sequence of responses.
• When sequenced responses is configured, on each incoming request to the same URI, a subsequent response in the list will be sent to the client. The sequenced responses play in a cycle (loop). In other words: after the response sequence plays through, the cycle restarts on the next incoming request.

-  request:
      method: [GET,POST]
      url: /invoice/123

   response:
      status: 201
      headers:
         content-type: application/json
      body: OK


-  request:
      method: [GET]
      url: /uri/with/sequenced/responses

   response:
      -  status: 201
         headers:
            content-type: application/json
         body: OK

      -  status: 201
         headers:
            content-stype: application/json
         body: Still going strong!

      -  status: 500
         headers:
            content-type: application/json
         body: OMG!!!


-  request:
      method: [GET]
      url: /uri/with/sequenced/responses/infile

   response:
      -  status: 201
         headers:
            content-type: application/json
         file: ../json/sequenced.response.ok.json

      -  status: 201
         headers:
            content-stype: application/json
         file: ../json/sequenced.response.goingstrong.json

      -  status: 500
         headers:
            content-type: application/json
         file: ../json/sequenced.response.omfg.json


-  request:
      method: [GET]
      url: /uri/with/single/sequenced/response

   response:
      -  status: 201
         headers:
            content-stype: application/json
         body: Still going strong!

status

• the HTTP status code of the response.
• integer or integer-like string.
• defaults to 200.

-  request:
      url: ^/im/a/teapot$
      method: POST
   response:
      status: 420

body

• contents of the response body
• defaults to an empty content body
• can be a URL (OAUTH is not supported) to record & replay. The HTTP response is recorded on the first call to stubbed url, having the subsequent calls play back the recorded HTTP response, without actually connecting to the external server

-  request:
      url: ^/give/me/a/smile$
   response:
      body: ':)'

-  request:
      url: ^/give/me/a/smile$

   response:
      status: 200
      body: >
         {"status": "hello world with single quote"}
      headers:
         content-type: application/json

-  request:
      method: GET
      url: /atomfeed/1

   response:
      headers:
         content-type: application/xml
      status: 200
      body: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><payment><paymentDetail><invoiceTypeLookupCode/></paymentDetail></payment>

-  request:
      url: /1.1/direct_messages.json
      query:
         since_id: 240136858829479935
         count: 1
   response:
      headers:
         content-type: application/json
      body: https://api.twitter.com/1.1/direct_messages.json?since_id=240136858829479935&count=1

file

• similar to request.file, but the contents of the file are used as the response body
• if the file could not be loaded, stubby falls back to the value stubbed in body
• if body was not stubbed, an empty string is returned by default
• it can be ascii of binary file (PDF, images, etc.). Please keep in mind, that file is preloaded upon stubby4j startup and its content is kept as a byte array in memory. In other words, response files are not read from the disk on demand, but preloaded.

-  request:
      url: /
   response:
      file: extremelyLongJsonFile.json

headers

• similar to request.headers except that these are sent back to the client.
• by default, header x-stubby-resource-id containing resource ID is returned with each stubbed response. The ID is useful if the returned resource needs to be updated at run time by ID via Admin portal

-  request:
      url: ^/give/me/some/json$
   response:
      headers:
         content-type: application/json
      body: >
         [{
            "name":"John",
            "email":"[email protected]"
         },{
            "name":"Jane",
            "email":"[email protected]"
         }]

latency

• time to wait, in milliseconds, before sending back the response
• good for testing timeouts, or slow connections

-  request:
      url: ^/hello/to/jupiter$
   response:
      latency: 800000
      body: Hello, World!

Response Callback

If the stubbed response contains a callback definition the server will send the specified callback request after the first response has been sent. This allows one to simulate an asynchronous call:

1. Client --request--> Server
2. Client <--response-- Server
3. Client <--callback-- Server

Example

-  request:
      method: [POST, PUT]
      url: /rest/callmeback.*
      headers:
          x-reference: "(.*)"
          x-return-url: "(.*)"
      
   response:                     
      -  status: 202
         headers:
            content-type: text/plain            
         callback:
                method: POST                
                url: <% headers.x-return-url.0 %>
                latency: 2000
                headers:
                    content-type: application/json
                body: >
                    {                    
                    "reference":"<% headers.x-reference.0 %>"
                    }

Limitation

• callback doesn't support the file configuration.
• Supports only one callback inside a response

Record and play

If body of the stubbed response contains a URL starting with http(s), stubby knows that it should record an HTTP response from the provided URL (before rendering the stubbed response) and replay the recorded HTTP response on each subsequent call.

Example

-  request:
      method: [GET]
      url: /maps/api/geocode/json
      query:
         address: "1600%20Amphitheatre%20Parkway,%20Mountain%20View,%20CA"
         sensor: false

   response:
      status: 200
      headers:
         content-type: application/json
      body: http://maps.googleapis.com

Example explained

Upon successful HTTP request verification, properties of stubbed request (method, url, headers, post and query) are used to construct an HTTP request to the destination URL specified in body of the stubbed response.

In the above example, stubby will record HTTP response received after submitting an HTTP GET request to the url below: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?sensor=false&address=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA

Please note

• Recorded HTTP response is not persistable, but kept in memory only. In other words, upon stubby shutdown the recording is lost
• Make sure to specify in response body only the URL, without the path info. Path info should be specified in request url

Dynamic token replacement in stubbed response

During HTTP request verification, you can leverage regex capturing groups as token values for dynamic token replacement in stubbed response.

Example

-  request:
      method: [GET]
      url: ^/account/(\d{5})/category/([a-zA-Z]+)
      query:
         date: "([a-zA-Z]+)"
      headers:
         custom-header: "[0-9]+"

   response:
      status: 200
      body: Returned invoice number# <% url.1 %> in category '<% url.2 %>' on the date '<% query.date.1 %>', using header custom-header <% headers.custom-header.0 %>

Example explained

The url regex ^/account/(\d{5})/category/([a-zA-Z]+) has two defined capturing groups: (\d{5}) and ([a-zA-Z]+), query regex has one defined capturing group ([a-zA-Z]+). In other words, a manually defined capturing group has parenthesis around it.

Although, the headers regex does not have capturing groups defined explicitly (no regex sections within parenthesis), its matched value is still accessible in a template (keep on reading!).

Token structure

The tokens in response body follow the format of <%``PROPERTY_NAME``.``CAPTURING_GROUP_ID``%>. If it is a token that should correspond to headers or query regex match, then the token structure would be as follows: <%``HEADERS_OR_QUERY``.``KEY_NAME``.``CAPTURING_GROUP_ID``%>. Whitespace is allowed between the <% & %> and what's inside.

Numbering the tokens based on capturing groups without sub-groups

When giving tokens their ID based on the count of manually defined capturing groups within regex, you should start from 1, not zero (zero reserved for token that holds full regex match) from left to right. So the leftmost capturing group would be 1 and the next one to the right of it would be 2, etc.

In other words <% url.1 %> and <% url.2 %> tokens correspond to two capturing groups from the url regex (\d{5}) and ([a-zA-Z]+), while <% query.date.1 %> token corresponds to one capturing group ([a-zA-Z]+) from the query date property regex.

Numbering the tokens based on capturing groups with sub-groups

In regex world, capturing groups can contain capturing sub-groups, as an example consider proposed url regex: ^/resource/``(``([a-z]{3})``-``([0-9]{3})``)``$. In the latter example, the regex has three groups - a parent group ([a-z]{3}-[0-9]{3}) and two sub-groups within: ([a-z]{3}) & ([0-9]{3}).

When giving tokens their ID based on the count of capturing groups, you should start from 1, not zero (zero reserved for token that holds full regex match) from left to right. If a group has sub-group within, you count the sub-group(s) first (also from left to right) before counting the next one to the right of the parent group.

In other words tokens <% url.1 %>, <% url.2 %> and <% url.3 %> correspond to the three capturing groups from the url regex (starting from left to right): ([a-z]{3}-[0-9]{3}), ([a-z]{3}) and ([0-9]{3}).

Tokens with ID zero

Tokens with ID zero can obtain full match value from the regex they reference. In other words, tokens with ID zero do not care whether regex has capturing groups defined or not. For example, token <% url.0 %> will be replaced with the url full regex match from ^/account/(\d{5})/category/([a-zA-Z]+). So if you want to access the url full regex match, respectively you would use token <% url.0 %> in your template.

Another example, would be the earlier case where headers custom-header property regex does not have capturing groups defined within. Which is fine, since the <% headers.custom-header.0 %> token corresponds to the full regex match in the header custom-header property regex: [0-9]+.

It is also worth to mention, that the full regex match value replacing token <% query.date.0 %>, would be equal to the regex capturing group value replacing <% query.date.1 %>. This is due to how the query date property regex is defined - the one and only capturing group in the query date regex, is also the full regex itself.

Where to specify the template

You can specify template with tokens in both body as a string or using file by specifying template as external local file. When template is specified as file, the contents of local file from file will be replaced, not the path to local file defined in file.

When token interpolation happens

After successful HTTP request verification, if your body or contents of local file from file contain tokens - the tokens will be replaced just before rendering HTTP response.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure that the regex you used in your stubby4j configuration actually does what it suppose to do. Validate that it works before using it in stubby4j
• Make sure that the regex has capturing groups for the parts of regex you want to capture as token values. In other words, make sure that you did not forget the parenthesis within your regex if your token IDs start from 1
• Make sure that you are using token ID zero, when wanting to use full regex match as the token value
• Make sure that the token names you used in your template are correct: check that property name is correct, capturing group IDs, token ID of the full match, the <% and %>

The admin portal

The admin portal is a RESTful(ish) endpoint running on localhost:8889. Or wherever you described through stubby's command line args.

Supplying endpoints to stubby

Submit POST requests to localhost:8889 or load a data-file (using -d / --data flags) with the following structure for each endpoint:

• request: describes the client's call to the server
  • method: GET/POST/PUT/DELETE/etc.
  • url: the URI regex string. GET parameters should also be included inline here
  • query: a key/value map of query string parameters included with the request. Query param value can be regex.
  • headers: a key/value map of headers the server should respond to. Header value can be regex.
  • post: a string matching the textual body of the response. Post value can be regex.
  • file: if specified, returns the contents of the given file as the request post. If the file cannot be found at request time, post is used instead
• response: describes the server's response (or array of responses, refer to the examples) to the client
  • headers: a key/value map of headers the server should use in it's response.
  • latency: the time in milliseconds the server should wait before responding. Useful for testing timeouts and latency
  • file: if specified, returns the contents of the given file as the response body. If the file cannot be found at request time, body is used instead
  • body: the textual body of the server's response to the client
  • status: the numerical HTTP status code (200 for OK, 404 for NOT FOUND, etc.)

YAML (file only or POST/PUT)

-  request:
      url: ^/path/to/something$
      method: POST
      headers:
         authorization: "bob:password"
         x-custom-header: "^this/is/\d/test"
      post: this is some post data in textual format
   response:
      headers:
         Content-Type: application/json
      latency: 1000
      status: 200
      body: You're request was successfully processed!

-  request:
      url: ^/path/to/anotherThing
      query:
         a: anything
         b: more
         custom: "^this/is/\d/test"
      method: GET
      headers:
         Content-Type: application/json
      post:
   response:
      headers:
         Content-Type: application/json
         Access-Control-Allow-Origin: "*"
      status: 204
      file: path/to/page.html

-  request:
      url: ^/path/to/thing$
      method: POST
      headers:
         Content-Type: application/json
      post: this is some post data in textual format
   response:
      headers:
         Content-Type: application/json
      status: 304

JSON support

JSON is a subset of YAML 1.2, SnakeYAML (Third-party library used by stubby4j for YAML & JSON parsing) implements YAML 1.1 at the moment. It means that not all the JSON documents can be parsed. Just give it a go.

JSON (file or POST/PUT)

[
  {
    "request": {
      "url": "^/path/to/something$",
      "post": "this is some post data in textual format",
      "headers": {
         "authorization": "bob:password"
      },
      "method": "POST"
    },
    "response": {
      "status": 200,
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      },
      "latency": 1000,
      "body": "You're request was successfully processed!"
    }
  },
  {
    "request": {
      "url": "^/path/to/anotherThing",
      "query": {
         "a": "anything",
         "b": "more"
      },
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      },
      "method": "GET"
    },
    "response": {
      "status": 204,
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "Access-Control-Allow-Origin": "*"
      },
      "file": "path/to/page.html"
    }
  },
  {
    "request": {
      "url": "^/path/to/thing$",
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      },
      "post": "this is some post data in textual format",
      "method": "POST"
    },
    "response": {
      "status": 304,
      "headers": {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      }
    }
  }
]

If you want to load more than one endpoint via file, use either a JSON array or YAML list (-) syntax. When creating or updating one stubbed request, the response will contain Location in the header with the newly created resources' location

Getting the current list of stubbed endpoints

Performing a GET request on localhost:8889 will return a YAML list of all currently saved responses. It will reply with 204 : No Content if there are none saved.

Performing a GET request on localhost:8889/<id> will return the YAML object representing the response with the supplied id.

The status page

You can also view the currently configured endpoints by going to localhost:8889/status

Refreshing stubbed data via an endpoint

If for some reason you do not want/cannot/not able to use --watch flag when starting stubby4j (or cannot restart stubby), you can submit GET request to localhost:8889/refresh (or load it in a browser) in order to refresh the stubbed data.

Changing existing endpoints

Perform PUT requests in the same format as using POST, only this time supply the id in the path. For instance, to update the response with id 4 you would PUT to localhost:8889/4.

Deleting endpoints

Send a DELETE request to localhost:8889/<id>

The stubs portal

Requests sent to any url at localhost:8882 (or wherever you told stubby to run) will search through the available endpoints and, if a match is found, respond with that endpoint's response data

How endpoints are matched

For a given endpoint, stubby only cares about matching the properties of the request that have been defined in the YAML. The exception to this rule is method; if it is omitted it is defaulted to GET.

For instance, the following will match any POST request to the root url:

-  request:
      url: /
      method: POST
   response: {}

The request could have any headers and any post body it wants. It will match the above.

Pseudocode:

for each <endpoint> of stored endpoints {

   for each <property> of <endpoint> {
      if <endpoint>.<property> != <incoming request>.<property>
         next endpoint
   }

   return <endpoint>
}

Programmatic API

Starting and using stubby4j with the help of StubbyClient

   /**
    * Starts stubby using default ports of Stubs (8882), Admin (8889) and SslStubs portals (7443) on localhost.
    *
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Starts stubby using default ports of Admin (8889) and SslStubs portals (7443), and given Stubs portal port  on localhost.
    *
    * @param stubsPort                 Stubs portal port
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final int stubsPort, final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Starts stubby using default port of SslStubs (7443), and given Stubs and Admin portals ports  on localhost.
    *
    * @param stubsPort                 Stubs portal port
    * @param adminPort                 Admin portal port
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final int stubsPort, final int adminPort, final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Starts stubby using given Stubs, SslStubs and Admin portals ports on localhost.
    *
    * @param stubsPort                 Stubs portal port
    * @param tlsPort                   TLS Stubs portal port
    * @param adminPort                 Admin portal port
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final int stubsPort, final int tlsPort, final int adminPort, final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Starts stubby using default port of SslStubs (7443), and given Stubs and Admin portals ports on a given host address.
    *
    * @param stubsPort                 Stubs portal port
    * @param adminPort                 Admin portal port
    * @param addressToBind             Address to bind Jetty
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final int stubsPort, final int adminPort, final String addressToBind, final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Starts stubby using given Stubs, SslStubs, Admin portals ports and host address.
    *
    * @param stubsPort                 Stubs portal port
    * @param tlsPort                   TLS Stubs portal port
    * @param adminPort                 Admin portal port
    * @param addressToBind             Address to bind Jetty
    * @param yamlConfigurationFilename an absolute or relative file path for YAML stubs configuration file.
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void startJetty(final int stubsPort, final int tlsPort, final int adminPort, final String addressToBind, final String yamlConfigurationFilename) throws Exception

   /**
    * Stops Jetty if it is up
    *
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public void stopJetty() throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby
    *
    * @param host      host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri       URI for the HTTP request
    * @param stubsPort port that stubby4j Stubs is running on
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGet(final String host, final String uri, final int stubsPort) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby over TLS on stubby4j default TLS port: 7443
    *
    * @param host host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri  URI for the HTTP request
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGetOverSsl(final String host, final String uri) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby over TLS on stubby4j
    *
    * @param host host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri  URI for the HTTP request
    * @param port TLS port
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGetOverSsl(final String host, final String uri, final int port) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby over TLS on stubby4j default TLS port: 7443
    * Also sets basic authorisation HTTP header using provided encoded credentials.
    * The credentials should be base-64 encoded using the following format - username:password
    *
    * @param host               host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri                URI for the HTTP request
    * @param port               TLS port
    * @param encodedCredentials Base 64 encoded username and password for the basic authorisation HTTP header
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGetOverSsl(final String host, final String uri, final int port, final String encodedCredentials) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby
    * Also sets basic authorisation HTTP header using provided encoded credentials.
    * The credentials should be base-64 encoded using the following format - username:password
    *
    * @param host               host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri                URI for the HTTP request
    * @param stubsPort          port that stubby4j Stubs is running on
    * @param encodedCredentials Base 64 encoded username and password for the basic authorisation HTTP header
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGet(final String host, final String uri, final int stubsPort, final String encodedCredentials) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby running on default host and port - localhost:8882
    *
    * @param uri URI for the HTTP request
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGetUsingDefaults(final String uri) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes GET HTTP request to stubby running on default host and port - localhost:8882.
    * Also sets basic authorisation HTTP header using provided encoded credentials.
    * The credentials should be base-64 encoded using the following format - username:password
    *
    * @param uri                URI for the HTTP request
    * @param encodedCredentials Base 64 encoded username and password for the basic authorisation HTTP header
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doGetUsingDefaults(final String uri, final String encodedCredentials) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes POST HTTP request to stubby
    *
    * @param host      host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri       URI for the HTTP request
    * @param stubsPort port that stubby4j Stubs is running on
    * @param post      data to POST to the server
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doPost(final String host, final String uri, final int stubsPort, final String post) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes POST HTTP request to stubby
    * Also sets basic authorisation HTTP header using provided encoded credentials.
    * The credentials should be base-64 encoded using the following format - username:password
    *
    * @param host               host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri                URI for the HTTP request
    * @param stubsPort          port that stubby4j Stubs is running on
    * @param encodedCredentials Base 64 encoded username and password for the basic authorisation HTTP header
    * @param post               data to POST to the server
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doPost(final String host, final String uri, final int stubsPort, final String encodedCredentials, final String post) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes POST HTTP request to stubby running on default host and port - localhost:8882
    *
    * @param uri  URI for the HTTP request
    * @param post data to POST to the server
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doPostUsingDefaults(final String uri, final String post) throws Exception

   /**
    * Makes POST HTTP request to stubby running on default host and port - localhost:8882.
    * Also sets basic authorisation HTTP header using provided encoded credentials.
    * The credentials should be base-64 encoded using the following format - username:password
    *
    * @param uri                URI for the HTTP request
    * @param post               data to POST to the server
    * @param encodedCredentials Base 64 encoded username and password for the basic authorisation HTTP header
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse doPostUsingDefaults(final String uri, final String post, final String encodedCredentials) throws Exception

   /**
    * Updated stubbed data with new data. This method creates a POST request to Admin portal
    *
    * @param url       fully constructed URL which included HTTP scheme, host and port
    * @param stubsData data to post
    */
   public StubbyResponse updateStubbedData(final String url, final String stubsData) throws Exception


   /**
    * Makes HTTP request to stubby.
    *
    * @param scheme HTTP protocol scheme, HTTP or HTTPS
    * @param method HTTP method, currently supported: GET, HEAD, PUT, POST
    * @param host   host that stubby4j is running on
    * @param uri    URI for the HTTP request
    * @param port   port that stubby4j Stubs is running on
    * @param post   data to POST to the server
    * @return StubbyResponse with HTTP status code and message from the server
    * @throws Exception
    */
   public StubbyResponse makeRequest(final String scheme,
                                     final String method,
                                     final String host,
                                     final String uri,
                                     final int port,
                                     final String post) throws Exception

Change log

2.0.22-SNAPSHOT

2.0.21

• Added console outputs for record & play functionality

2.0.20

• Replacing all hardcoded \n with dynamically generated system line break characters

2.0.19

• Record&Play is now more intelligent: when stubbed request is matched, its stubbed properties (method, url, headers, post and query) are used to construct HTTP request to the recordable destination URL provided in stubbed response body [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added a workaround a limitation in SnakeYAML v1.13 used by stubby (it has limited JSON support, not all the JSON documents can be parsed) where it cannot parse escaped forward slashes in JSON [BUG]
• Refreshing Admin status page was changing sequenced response counter ID [BUG]
• Replaced hardcoded Unix new line character '\n' in YamlBuilderTest that caused the tests to fail on Windows [BUG]
• Admin status page now shows what is the next sequenced response in the sequence queue [ENHANCEMENT]
• Supporting HTTP requests with empty query params: /uri?some_param= or /uri?some_param [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.18

• When --data file was just a relative filename without parent directory, NPE was thrown when Admin portal status page was loaded [BUG]
• Configured jetty GZIP handler for static resources and Stubs & Admin portals [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added resource hit stats section to Admin portal status page [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.17

• Added a verification check in StubbyManager to make sure that Jetty has been started or shut down [ENHANCEMENT]
• Upgraded SnakeYAML dependency library to v1.13 [ENHANCEMENT]
• Admin status page: displaying YAML snippet for a given request or response separately instead of pairing them up [ENHANCEMENT]
• Admin status page: displaying metadata of loaded external files (if any) [ENHANCEMENT]
• Admin status page: displaying Ajax response in a JS popup, instead of injecting the Ajax response into HTML table [ENHANCEMENT]
• A bunch of cosmetic changes on Admin status page [COSMETICS]

2.0.16

• Displaying stubby JAR: version, its classpath location, built date, up-time, its input args and Java input args on status page [ENHANCEMENT]
• Displaying stubby heap/non-heap memory usage on status page [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added an option on admin status page to display YAML snippet for a given request & response pair [ENHANCEMENT]
• Making sure that 'x-stubby-resource-id' header is always the first item in the stubbed headers on status page [ENHANCEMENT]
• Changed colors of status page [COSMETICS]

2.0.15

• When creating template token names for query or headers regex matches, the name format to be followed should be headers.key_name.ID or query.key_name.ID [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.14

• Whitespace was not allowed between the <% & %> and what's inside when specifying template tokens for dynamic token replacement in stubbed response [BUG]
• Regex matches were stored against incorrect token names for query and headers regexes [BUG]
• Renamed command line arg --ssl to --tls to reduce the confusion when having another command line arg that starts with letter s, like --stubs [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added command line arg --version that prints current stubby4j version to the console [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.13

• Dynamic token replacement in stubbed response, by leveraging regex capturing groups as token values during HTTP request verification [FEATURE]

2.0.12

• Removed flag --watch_sleep_time. The --watch flag can now accept an optional arg value which is the watch scan time in milliseconds. If milliseconds is not provided, the watch scans every 100ms [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added additional API to start Jetty via StubbyClient by specifying an address to bind [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.11

• --watch flag sleep time is now configurable via --watch_sleep_time and defaults to 100ms if --watch_sleep_time is not provided [ENHANCEMENT]
• Added a GET endpoint on Admin portal localhost:8889/refresh for refreshing stubbed data [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.10

• Record & Replay. The HTTP traffic is recorded on the first call to stubbed uri and subsequent calls will play back the recorded HTTP response, without actually connecting to the external server [FEATURE]

2.0.9

• Ensuring that Admin portal status page loads fast by not rendering stubbed response content which slows down page load. User can invoke Ajax request to fetch the desired response content as needed [ENHANCEMENT]
• Pre-setting header x-stubby-resource-id during YAML parse time, instead of on demand. This way resource IDs are viewable on Admin status page [ENHANCEMENT]
• Making sure that header x-stubby-resource-id is recalculated accordingly after stubbed data in memory has changed (due to reset, or deletion etc.) [BUG]
• Added date stamp to live reload success message [COSMETICS]

2.0.8

• Making sure that every stubbed response returned to the client contains its resource ID in the header x-stubby-resource-id. The latter is useful if the returned resource needs to be updated at run time by ID via Admin portal [FEATURE]

2.0.7

• Force regex matching only everywhere (url, query, post, headers, etc.) to avoid confusion and unexpected behaviour, with default fallback to simple full-string match (Michael England) [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.6

• Live YAML scan now also check for modifications to external files referenced from main YAML [ENHANCEMENT]
• YAML parsing logic revisited [COSMETICS]
• Code cleanup [COSMETICS]

2.0.5

• Added ability to specify sequence of responses on the same URI using file (Prakash Kandavel) [ENHANCEMENT]
• Minor code clean up [COSMETICS]
• Documentation update [COSMETICS]

2.0.4

• Making sure that operations starting up stubby and managing stubbed data are atomic [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.3

• Typo in test was giving wrong indication that when file not set, stubbed response fallsback to body [BUG]
• Eliminated implicit test to test dependencies in AdminPortalTest that was causing issues when running the tests under JDK 1.7 [BUG]
• Added convenience method in StubbyClient updateStubbedData [ENHANCEMENT]

2.0.2

• Stubbed request HTTP header names were not lower-cased at the time of match [BUG]
• Doing GET on Admin portal / will display all loaded stub data in a YAML format in the browser [FEATURE]
• Doing GET on Admin portal /<id> will display loaded stub data matched by provided index in a YAML format in the browser [FEATURE]
• Doing DELETE on Admin portal /<id> will delete stubbed request from the list of loaded stub requests using the index provided [FEATURE]
• Doing PUT on Admin portal /<id> will update stubbed request in the list of loaded stub requests using the index provided [FEATURE]
• When YAML is parsed, if file could not be loaded, the IOException is not thrown anymore. Instead a warning recorded in the terminal [ENHANCEMENT]
• When could not match submitted HTTP request to stubbed requests, the not found message is much more descriptive [ENHANCEMENT]
• URI for registering new stub data programmatically via POST on Admin portal was changed from /stubdata/new to / [COSMETICS]
• URI for getting loaded stub data status was changed from /ping to /status on Admin portal [COSMETICS]
• Updated to SnakeYAML v1.12 [COSMETICS]
• Updated default response message when response content could not be loaded from file [ENHANCEMENT]
• Documentation refinement [COSMETICS]

2.0.1

• Every url is treated as a regular expression now [ENHANCEMENT]
• ANSI logging in the terminal was working only for HTTP requests with status 200 [BUG]
• Documentation refinement [COSMETICS]

2.0.0

• Mainly backend code improvements: A lot of refactoring for better code readability, expanding test coverage [COSMETICS]

1.0.63

• Added ability to specify sequence of stub responses for the same URI, that are sent to the client in the loop [FEATURE]
• Configuration scan was not enabled, even if the --watch command line argument was passed [BUG]

1.0.62

• Added ability to specify regex in stabbed URL for dynamic matching [FEATURE]
• A lot of minor fixes, refactorings and code cleaned up [COSMETICS]
• Documentation revisited and rewritten into a much clearer format [ENHANCEMENT]

1.0.61

• Just some changes around unit, integration and functional tests. Code cleanup [COSMETICS]

1.0.60

• stubby's admin page was generating broken hyper links if URL had single quotes [BUG]
• stubby is able to match URL when query string param was an array with elements within single quotes, ie: attributes=['id','uuid'] [ENHANCEMENT]

1.0.59

• stubby's admin page was not able to display the contents of stubbed response/request body, post or file [BUG]
• stubby was not able to match URL when query string param was an array with quoted elements, ie: attributes=["id","uuid","created","lastUpdated","displayName","email"] [BUG]

1.0.58

• Making sure that stubby can serve binary files as well as ascii files, when response is loaded using the file property [ENHANCEMENT]

1.0.57

• Migrated the project from Maven to Gradle (thanks to Logan McGrath for his feedback and assistance). The project has now a multi-module setup [ENHANCEMENT]

1.0.56

• If request.post was left out of the configuration, stubby would ONLY match requests without a post body to it [BUG]
• Fixing See Also section of readme [COSMETICS]

1.0.55

• Updated YAML example documentation [COSMETICS]
• Bug fix where command line options mute, debug and watch were overlooked [BUG]

1.0.54

• Previous commit (v1.0.53) unintentionally broke use of embedded stubby [BUG]

Roadmap

• Add support for OAuth in Record & Replay feature
• Scenarios where multiple endpoints correlate with each other based on the scenario. Useful in e2e testing where system brought to a certain state (maybe?)

Authors

A number of people have contributed directly to stubby4j by writing documentation or developing software.

1. Alexander Zagniotov [email protected]
2. Eric Mrak [email protected]

Kudos

A number of people have contributed to stubby4j by reporting problems, suggesting improvements or submitting changes. Special thanks fly out to the following Ninjas for their help, support and feedback

• Isa Goksu
• Eric Mrak
• Oleksandr Berezianskyi
• Sankalp Saxena
• Simon Brunning
• Ed Hewell
• Kenny Lin
• Logan McGrath

See also

• stubby4net: A .NET implementation of stubby
• stubby4node: A node.js implementation of stubby

Copyright

See COPYRIGHT for details.