Getting Started

Ply is all about automated testing of REST (and GraphQL) APIs. By running Ply tests, you’re sending actual HTTP requests to exercise your service endpoints.

You can run Ply by installing the VS Code extension and/or command line interface. Ply tests come in three flavors:

• Requests
  Ply requests can be opened in Ply’s request editor (.ply file extension), or you string together requests in YAML that you edit directly (.yaml/yml or .ply.yaml/yml extension). Multiple requests in a YAML file are referred to collectively as a suite.
• Flows
  Flow files end with .flow (.ply.flow is preferred). Format is either YAML or JSON, although you wouldn’t want to edit a Ply flow directly as text. Use the graphical editor in VS Code.
• Cases
  Cases are written in TypeScript, ending in .ts (or .ply.ts). Write a Ply case when you need to programmatically execute requests and interrogate responses.

Results

When responses are received by Ply, they’re compared against an Expected Results file, which is in YAML format and may contain expressions to parameterize dynamic values.

Jump right in

Want to get straight to building a Ply flow? Proceed to the walkthrough topic in this guide.

Next Topic: Requests