Best Way to Test Rails REST XML API?

I rolled my own solution to this and thought it would be helpful. I wrote a module that uses the json, curb, and addressable gems to send GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE requests to localhost:3000. It can request either XML (as the original question asked for) or json. It returns the response body as a Hash. It is mostly a wrapper around the curb gem, which I think has horrendous syntax.

Note that I am automatically loading my api_key. This can be disabled by passing :api_key => false or broken using api_key => "wrong". You might want to leave this out or modify it to fit your authentication scheme.

Here's the module:

module ApiTesting  # requres the json, curb, and addressable gems  require "addressable/uri"  def api_call(path, verb, query_hash={}, options={})    options.reverse_merge! :api_key => "abc1234", :format => "xml"    query_hash.reverse_merge!({:api_key => options["api_key"]}) if options[:api_key]    query = to_query_string(query_hash)    full_path = "http://localhost:3000/#{path}.#{options[:format]}?#{query}"    response = case verb      when :get        Curl::Easy.perform(full_path)      when :post        Curl::Easy.http_post("http://localhost:3000/#{path}.#{options[:format]}", query)      when :put        Curl::Easy.http_put(full_path, nil)      when :delete        Curl::Easy.http_delete(full_path)    end    case options[:format]      when "xml"        Hash.from_xml(response.body_str)      when "json"        JSON.parse(response.body_str)    end  end  private  def to_query_string(val)    uri = Addressable::URI.new    uri.query_values = val    uri.query  endend

And here are some simple examples:Requesting resource attributes with GET:

    api_call("calls/41", :get)

Creating resources with POST:

    api_call("people", :post, {:person => {:first => "Robert", :last => "Smith" } })

Updating resources with PUT:

    api_call("people/21", :put, {:person => { :first => "Bob" } })

Deleting resources with DELETE:

    api_call("calls/41", :delete)

Turning off automatic insertion of api_key:

    api_call("calls/41", :get, {}, {:api_key => false})

Use the wrong api_key:

    api_call("calls/41", :get, {}, {:api_key => "wrong"})

Use as json (default is xml):

    api_call("calls/41", :get, {}, {:format => "json"})

I would recommend using Cucumber. Cucumber emulates a browser and you can verify the results it gets. This works fine for XML requests as well as JSON and plain old HTML.

This is not automated but it is really great for seeing what your API is doing.

http://hurl.r09.railsrumble.com/