RAML-based mock service generator for microservice applications testing

The automation capabilities and flexibility of computing resource scaling in cloud environments require novel approaches to application design. The microservice architectural style, which has been actively developing in recent years, is an approach to design a single application as a suite of small services. Continuous integration approach demands transition from manual testing methods to fully automated methods. The mocking is one of the methods to simplify development and testing of microservice applications. The mock service can be considered as an extension of mock object concept. It simulates the behavior of a web service based on a description of its interface. However, developers need to spend additional efforts on development and support of these mock services. We propose a method that would make it easier to generate mocks for REST services by using RAML specifications of services. Using this approach, we propose an implementation, which provides mock services generation and deployment as Docker containers. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.