Runscope Offers New Service To Test Live API Calls For Improving The Quality Of Mobile Apps

Runscope, which develops tools that monitor API traffic, has launched a new automated API and backend service testing tool to improve the quality of mobile apps.

The new Runscope Radar service, launched here at AWS re:Invent, is designed to alleviate the concerns that comes with changing backend APIs. It allows app maintainers to verify that their backend services are returning the data their apps expect with the intent of reducing the frequency of app crashes. But testing can be a fragile process that if goes wrong can cause a poor experience for the customer. Runscope Radar is designed to help customers change their app’s backend services without breaking the app. The intent is to provide ways to improve the service without disrupting the customer experience.

With Radar, a developer starts with a list of request and sets the parameters to determine if the API is working. The tests are based on real requests made from apps for high-fidelity re-creations of real-world situations.

A customer receives notifications based upon the completion or failure of any test. The service integrates with services like CircleCi, GitHub, Heroku, Jenkins and TeamCity to run API tests on commits, build or deploys.

For example, a developer consuming an API just wants to make sure that it is not affecting the end-user experience. If an API breaks it disrupts the communication.

“Broken services, broken apps,” said John Sheehan, CEO of Runscope to me at the conference after his presentation at the event. ”Even internal services powering your apps need to be always available.”

APIs are now widely used by developers but reliability is still an issues as there can be any number of issues with the numerous devices and platforms people use.

There are still few ways to manage API reliability. Companies go through a process of checking with API providers to determine if they can be counted on.

Runscope is a company that offers a service that will become more in demand as APIs become ever more common. The process to test APIs is for the most part a manual one that needs to be more automated. This is especially true as more startups emerge that are pure API services offered as mobile apps.