API: Doping and Stabilizer for UI Testing

No matter how you twist the testing pyramid, functional UI tests will always play a very important role and take up most of the work time of many automators. Often, the API of the application under test is perceived as some part separate from the UI that has nothing to do with these tests: it is covered by unit tests, the developers are responsible for it, and automators deal with it only as part of the task “and also write tests for the API in Postman".

If you look at the API from a different point of view, it turns out that with the help of API requests, you can significantly speed up, simplify, stabilize UI tests, and even move part of the business logic testing to the API testing area. Such "hybrid" tests that combine UI and API steps are extremely rare. And I would like to demonstrate clearly, with examples, that it is not difficult, extremely effective and does not contradict any canons of classical UI testing.