How to Use Chrome Developer Tools for API Testing?

If you want to perform API testing with Chrome Developer Tools, you're in the right place. The Chrome Developer Tools offer a built-in way to test API responses and analyze network activity. Using the Chrome DevTools network tab, you can inspect API requests, view responses, and monitor the data being exchanged between the browser and the server. This guide will help you understand how to test APIs in Chrome Developer Tools, making debugging and analyzing API calls much easier.

There are many features of dev tools and To undersatnad all of this please refer to this article: 9 Features of Chrome Developer Tools That You Must Know

API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface which is a collection of communication protocols and subroutines used by various programs to communicate between them. There are different types of APIs available:

• WEB APIs
• LOCAL APIs
• PROGRAM APIs
• SOAP (SIMPLE OBJECT ACCESS PROTOCOL)
• REST (Representational State Transfer)

In this article, we are going to see how can we use this tool for testing our APIs. And enhance your API testing process with the insights provided in our Complete Guide to Software Testing at GeeksforGeeks.

Step to Use Chrome Developer Tools for API Testing

Step 1: Open the Chrome Developer Tools

• Go to your Chrome Browser > Click on the Right Corner 3 Vertical Dots > More Tools > Developer Tools as shown in the below image.

• And this is what the Developer tools look like. Adjust the screen at your convenience. And come to the Network tab because there are many things to explore in this tool but for API testing we need the Network tab as shown in the below image.

Step 2: Hit Your Endpoint

• Now in the URL tab hit your endpoint or the URL you want to test. Suppose in this article we are putting the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/simple-calculator/geeksforgeeks.org/home

• And whenever you put the URL and click Enter you can see something is happening in the Network tab. Refer to the below image to see what happens.

• Now click on your endpoint and you can see in the Headers part everything is present related to your API. It is highly suggested that you explore the Preview, Response, Timing, and Cookies tab. Refer to the below image.

Step 3: Let's Put Some Values and See What Happens

• Now let's put some values and click on the Bind Data button, you can see in the below image we get our next endpoint which is with the query string.

process-homepage?firstName=Amiya&lastName=Rout

• Also in the Payload part, you can see our query parameter.

Using Chrome Developer Tools for API testing can significantly improve your development and testing workflow.

Conclusion

Utilizing Chrome Developer Tools for API testing is an efficient way to monitor and debug API requests. Whether you need to inspect API requests or analyze their responses, Chrome DevTools provide a robust set of tools for the job. By mastering API debugging in Chrome Developer Tools, you'll be able to troubleshoot and optimize the performance of your web applications effectively.