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Your own web server for happy HTTP testing

Lightweight fake web apps for testing. Built using thecivetweb embedded web server.

• Complete web app framework, define handlers for HTTP requests in R.
• Write your own app for your custom test cases; our use app similar tothehttps://httpbin.org API, so often you don’t need to write yourown web app (e.g. if you are writing an HTTP client (httr, curl,crul).
• Run one web app per test suite, per test file or per test case.
• Flexible path matching, with parameters and regular expressions.
• Built in templating system using glue or bring your own templateengine.
• Middleware to parse JSON, multipart and URL encoded request bodies.
• A web app is just an R object. It can be saved to disk, copied toanother R process, etc.
• A web app is extensible, by adding new routes and middleware to it.
• Helper functions for sending JSON, files from disk, etc.
• App-specific environment to store any data including data fromrequests to the fake app.
• After a web app is launched from R, you can interact with it from Rbut also from the command line, your browser, etc. Nice for debugging.
• The web server runs in the R process, so it has no problems with localfirewalls.
• Multi-threaded web server supports concurrent HTTP requests.
• Limit download speed to simulate low bandwidth.

• The jsonlite package is needed for themw_json() middleware, theresponse$send_json() method and thehttpbin_app() app.
• The glue package is needed for thetmpl_glue() template engine.
• The callr package is needed fornew_app_process() andlocal_app_process to work.
• The/brotli endpoint ofhttpbin_app() needs the brotli package.
• The/deflate endpoint ofhttpbin_app() needs the zip package.
• The/digest-auth endpoint ofhttpbin_app() needs the digestpackage.
• git_app() requires the processx package.

Install the release version from CRAN:

install.packages("webfakes")

If you need the development version of the package, install it fromGitHub:

pak::pak("r-lib/webfakes")

Start a web app at the beginning of your tests or test file, and stop itafter. Here is an example with the testthat package. Suppose you want totest that yourget_hello() function can query an API:

local_app_process() helps you clean up the web server process afterthe test block, or test file. It is similar to thewithr::local_*functions.

app<-webfakes::new_app()app$get("/hello/:user",function(req,res) {res$send(paste0("Hello",req$params$user,"!"))})web<-webfakes::local_app_process(app)test_that("can use hello API", {url<-web$url("/hello/Gabor")  expect_equal(get_hello(url),"Hello Gabor!")})

When testing HTTP clients you can often use the built inhttpbin_app():

httpbin<-webfakes::local_app_process(webfakes::httpbin_app())

test_that("HTTP errors are caught", {url<-httpbin$url("/status/404")resp<-httr::GET(url)  expect_error(httr::stop_for_status(resp),class="http_404")})

#> Test passed 😸

Seehttps://webfakes.r-lib.org

• vcr
• httptest

webfakes focuses on testing, these packages are for writing real webapps:

• shiny
• opencpu
• plumber
• fiery
• RestRserve

Please note that the webfakes project is released with aContributor Code ofConduct. Bycontributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

MIT © RStudio