Practice: Build Your Framework

Reading about frameworks is not enough. You need to build one. This exercise walks you through creating a complete API test framework from scratch. Use JSONPlaceholder (https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com) as your target API.

Exercise 1: Project Setup

1. Create a new Maven project called api-test-framework
2. Add all dependencies to pom.xml: REST Assured, TestNG, Jackson, Allure
3. Create the full folder structure: config, base, pojo, endpoints, tests, utils
4. Create dev.properties with base.url=https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com
5. Create ConfigReader.java and verify it loads the properties correctly

Exercise 2: Base Layer

1. Create BaseTest with @BeforeSuite and @BeforeClass methods
2. Set up RequestSpec with base URI, content type, and AllureRestAssured filter
3. Create BaseEndpoint with doGet, doPost, doPut, doDelete helper methods
4. Write a quick sanity test to verify the setup works: GET /posts should return 200

Exercise 3: POJOs

1. Create CreatePostRequest POJO with fields: title, body, userId
2. Create PostResponse POJO with fields: id, title, body, userId
3. Add @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true) on response POJO
4. Test serialization: create a POJO and print its JSON using ObjectMapper

Exercise 4: Endpoint + Test Classes

1. Create PostEndpoint with methods: getAll, getById, create, update, delete
2. Create PostTests with at least 5 tests: get all, get by ID, create, update, get invalid ID
3. Add a DataProvider with 3 different post data sets
4. Add TestNG groups: smoke, regression
5. Create testng.xml with smoke and regression configurations

Exercise 5: Reports and Execution

1. Add @Epic, @Feature, @Story, @Severity annotations to your tests
2. Run all tests: mvn test
3. Generate Allure report: allure serve target/allure-results/
4. Verify that request/response details appear in the report for each test
5. Run only smoke tests: mvn test -Dgroups=smoke
6. Create staging.properties and run: mvn test -Denv=staging

Bonus Challenge

Add a UserEndpoint and UserTests class for the /users resource. Include nested POJO for the address object (street, suite, city, zipcode, geo). Add schema validation using matchesJsonSchemaInClasspath. Add a CommentEndpoint for /comments with query parameter support (postId). This gives you a 3-resource framework — exactly what you would describe in an interview.