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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat= Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat=Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

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Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag=Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

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Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.

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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

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To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

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Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:

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Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.

I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.

You can explore the course here:

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Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.

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Partner – LambdaTest – NPI EA (cat=Testing)
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End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

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1. Overview

In this tutorial, we’ll focus on the principles and mechanics of testing a REST API through integration tests. Specifically, we’ll be testing the API with live requests and JSON payloads to ensure its correctness and behavior.

Further reading:

Integration Testing in Spring

A quick guide to writing integration tests for a Spring Web application.

Testing in Spring Boot

Learn about how the Spring Boot supports testing, to write unit tests efficiently.

A Guide to REST-assured

Explore the basics of REST-assured - a library that simplifies the testing and validation of REST APIs.

2. API Integration Testing

API integration testing involves testing the interactions between our application and its external dependencies (such as databases, third-party services, or other APIs). The goal is to ensure that different components of the system work together as expected. Unlike unit tests focusing on individual components, integration tests simulate real-world usage by sending actual HTTP requests to our API and checking the responses, ensuring that everything works together as expected.

2.1. Why API Integration Testing Is Important

While unit tests ensure individual pieces of code work as intended, they can’t catch issues that arise from the integration of these components. Integration tests address these concerns by checking how different parts of the system communicate, ensuring that miscommunications or errors between components don’t disrupt the overall functionality.

Additionally, they give teams confidence that the system will work as expected in production, reducing the risk of failures after deployment.

2.2. When to Conduct API Integration Testing

Typically, API integration tests are conducted after unit tests but before major releases. After unit testing confirms that individual components are functioning properly, integration tests ensure the components work together as expected.

Integration testing should also be performed before major releases to catch any potential regressions or integration issues that could arise with new features or updates.

3. Testing the Status Code

To ensure the API behaves as expected when a user does not exist, we can test the response status code:

@Test
public void givenUserDoesNotExists_whenUserInfoIsRetrieved_then404IsReceived()
  throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
 
    // Given
    String name = RandomStringUtils.randomAlphabetic( 8 );
    HttpUriRequest request = new HttpGet( "https://api.github.com/users/" + name );

    // When
    HttpResponse httpResponse = HttpClientBuilder.create().build().execute( request );

    // Then
    assertThat(
      httpResponse.getStatusLine().getStatusCode(),
      equalTo(HttpStatus.SC_NOT_FOUND));
}

This is a rather simple test. It verifies that a basic happy path is working, without adding too much complexity to the test suite.

If, for whatever reason, it fails, then we don’t need to look at any other test for this URL until we fix it.

4. Testing the Media Type

We can also test on the media type to ensure that the default Content-Type of the response is JSON:

@Test
public void 
givenRequestWithNoAcceptHeader_whenRequestIsExecuted_thenDefaultResponseContentTypeIsJson()
  throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
 
   // Given
   String jsonMimeType = "application/json";
   HttpUriRequest request = new HttpGet( "https://api.github.com/users/eugenp" );

   // When
   HttpResponse response = HttpClientBuilder.create().build().execute( request );

   // Then
   String mimeType = ContentType.getOrDefault(response.getEntity()).getMimeType();
   assertEquals( jsonMimeType, mimeType );
}

This ensures that the Response actually contains JSON data.

As we can see, we’re following a logical progression of tests. First is the Response Status Code (to ensure the request was OK), and then the Media Type of the Response. Only in the next test will we look at the actual JSON payload.

5. Testing the JSON Payload

To verify that the API returns the correct data, we can test the contents of the JSON payload. Here, we check that the information for an existing user matches the expected values:

@Test
public void 
  givenUserExists_whenUserInformationIsRetrieved_thenRetrievedResourceIsCorrect()
  throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {
 
    // Given
    HttpUriRequest request = new HttpGet( "https://api.github.com/users/eugenp" );

    // When
    HttpResponse response = HttpClientBuilder.create().build().execute( request );

    // Then
    GitHubUser resource = RetrieveUtil.retrieveResourceFromResponse(
      response, GitHubUser.class);
    assertThat( "eugenp", Matchers.is( resource.getLogin() ) );
}

In this case, the default representation of the GitHub resources is JSON, but usually, the Content-Type header of the response should be tested alongside the Accept header of the request. The client asks for a particular type of representation via Accept, which the server should honor.

6. Utilities for Testing

We’ll use Jackson 2 to unmarshall the raw JSON String into a type-safe Java Entity:

public class GitHubUser {

    private String login;

    // standard getters and setters
}

We’re only using a simple utility to keep the tests clean, readable, and at a high level of abstraction:

public static <T> T retrieveResourceFromResponse(HttpResponse response, Class<T> clazz) 
  throws IOException {
 
    String jsonFromResponse = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity());
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper()
      .configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
    return mapper.readValue(jsonFromResponse, clazz);
}

Notice that Jackson is ignoring unknown properties that the GitHub API is sending our way. This is simply because the Representation of a User Resource on GitHub gets pretty complex, and we don’t need any of that information here.

7. Dependencies

The utilities and tests make use of the following libraries, all of which are available in Maven Central:

8. Conclusion

This is only one part of what the complete integration testing suite should be. The tests focus on ensuring basic correctness for the REST API, without going into more complex scenarios.

For example, we didn’t cover the following: discoverability of the API, consumption of different representations for the same Resource, etc.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.
Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat = Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag = Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=HTTP Client-Side)
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The Apache HTTP Client is a very robust library, suitable for both simple and advanced use cases when testing HTTP endpoints. Check out our guide covering basic request and response handling, as well as security, cookies, timeouts, and more:

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eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

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eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

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eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=REST)

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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Course – LS – NPI (cat=REST)
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Get started with Spring Boot and with core Spring, through the Learn Spring course:

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eBook Jackson – NPI EA – 3 (cat = Jackson)