Simplify Regression Testing with IxLoad RESTful API
By Mihai Puchiu | Automation makes work more efficient. This translates to testing as well. The highest efficiency occurs when tests are run automatically, with minimum involvement of a test engineer. Although it’s fun to edit test configurations from Keysight’s IxLoad UI and feel its power, it’s even better to have the tool working for you in an automated way. A broad array of automation capabilities, including wizards to help or guide the process of test configuration design, embedded benchmarking and maximum performance seeking mechanisms, and APIs control IxLoad in various automation environments. Each method addresses an important use case, but in this blog, we will focus on how IxLoad test configuration and test run can be done by using the RESTful API.
REpresentational State Transfer (REST) is an architecture for designing applications, and an application is RESTful if it complies with the constrains of the REST architectural style. High performance, scalability, simplicity, modifiability, visibility, portability, and reliability are the inherent attributes of a RESTful application.
The IxLoad RESTful API conforms to the REST constrains, defining how resources are represented, accessed, and changed, as well as the data model. Similar to virtually all RESTful implementations, IxLoad also uses HTTP as the communication protocol supporting a specific set of methods (see the following table). The content type for the payload is JSON.
IxLoad REST Methods
The following functionality can be performed by using IxLoad REST API:
- Create and start an IxLoad session.
- Load an IxLoad configuration (.rxf) from a local path.
- View data model tree by using GET requests (including query string support).
- Modify the chassis and port mappings.
- Change parameters in the test configuration by modifying the field values by using PATCH requests on:
- L2/3 range support: IP ranges
- L4-7 plugin support: Data protocols
- Save configuration modified through REST API.
- View, add, or delete the configured L4-7 statistics.
- Start, monitor, or stop the test run.
- Poll the L4-7 statistics.
- Query the logs.
- Generate the documentation automatically.
The step-by-step instructions in the following image exemplify how the REST requests are used to navigate the IxLoad object hierarchy to identify the data structure and the available operations. The example is limited to creating and starting a new session, but the same principles apply to any other operation. The only URL that has to be remembered is <ipaddress>/api/v0, where <ipaddress> is the address of the system where the IxLoad client component is installed and where IxLoadGateway runs.
For detailed information regarding the resources, features, methods, and operations available in the IxLoad RESTful API, see the REST API Programming Guide (user sign in may be required). An easy way to start using IxLoad REST is by opening one of the templates that is provided with the IxLoad client installation. The RestScripts folder in the installation directory of IxLoad contains sample scripts that perform basic IxLoad operations from REST by using Python.