Freemium Mock Web APIs for testing - Beeceptor

Often when we develop we will end up in situations where we need to simulate the real scenario by mocking the dependencies. It may be databases, Web APIs, or container images. There was a separate post on mock container images that echo HTTP. 

Problem

There are scenarios where we may not be having the opportunity to run containers to expose the mock Web APIs. This post about handling such scenarios

Solutions

There are many solutions to address this.

Hosting Web API from our machine

We don't need to code from scratch. Just search in GitHub and we can get many. Simply clone and run.

Using internet-hosted mock Web APIs

This works if our development environment has access to the internet. There are paid as well as freemium services. One such freemium service is Beeceptor. 

Please note this post is not sponsored by Beeceptor also the author is not at all affiliated to the service. Their service saved some time today hence this post.

Some features are below

• The free tier gives 50 requests per day. 
• Integrated with Google and GitHub accounts. No need to remember one more password.
• Support delay even in the free tier.
• Support custom response headers and status codes.
• The HTTP responses can be configured quickly using the 'Mocking Rules' editor.

This is not a sophisticated mock Web API provider but it helps us to get quick mocks

Happy mocking...