REST API

TLDR: Spark is static so having it run in an @BeforeClass allows HTTP request testing to begin.

I use Spark as the embedded web server in my applications. I also run simple HTTP tests against this as part of my local maven build. And I start Spark within the JUnit tests themselves. In this post I’ll show how.

TLDR: refactored to isolate XML processing, configured XStream in code, removed all annotations, added XML header, wrote less code

I have a small REST API application which uses Spark and GSON and JAXB. I haven’t released this to Github yet but I did release some of the example externally executed []integration verification code](https://github.com/eviltester/automating-rest-api) for it.

When trying to package this for Java 1.9 I encountered the, now standard, missing JAXB, libraries. So I thought I’d investigate another XML library.

TLDR; HttpURLConnection does not support PATCH, but we can sometimes use X-HTTP-Method-Override instead (this works with Spark Framework). I can Patch POJO using reflection, or deserialize to simple POJO and compare with null values instead

TLDR; Architecting a Web Service using Spark Framework to support more Unit testing and allow the inclusion of HTTP @Test methods in the build without deploying the application. Create API as a POJO. Start Spark in @BeforeClass, stop it in @AfterClass, make simple HTTP calls.