I'm building an app with a public API and need a good way to test endpoints before release

A good approach is to test your API in layers so you catch issues early and also verify behavior end-to-end before release.

Recommended testing stack

1. Unit tests

   • Test individual functions, validators, serializers, auth helpers, etc.
   • Fastest feedback.
   • Use mocks for external services.

2. Integration tests

   • Test your API endpoints against a real test database and real request/response cycle.
   • Verify routing, auth, validation, status codes, and payloads.
   • This is usually the most important layer for endpoint confidence.

3. Contract tests

   • If clients depend on your public API, define expected request/response shapes and ensure they don’t break.
   • Great for backward compatibility.

4. End-to-end tests

   • Simulate a user or client flow across multiple endpoints.
   • Good for critical workflows like signup, payment, or data creation.

5. Smoke tests / post-deploy checks

   • Run a small set of “is it alive and sane?” checks after release in staging and production.

Good tools

Depends on your stack, but common choices:

• Postman / Insomnia for manual endpoint testing and collections
• pytest + requests / test client for automated API tests in Python
• Jest + Supertest for Node.js APIs
• Playwright / Cypress if you also need browser-driven flows
• Schemathesis or similar if you have an OpenAPI spec and want automatic property-based API tests
• Newman to run Postman collections in CI

Best practice workflow

• Maintain an OpenAPI/Swagger spec for your API.
• Write automated integration tests for every endpoint.
• Run them in CI on every PR.
• Spin up a staging environment that mirrors production.
• Use test data and seeded fixtures.
• Add negative tests:
  • missing auth
  • invalid payloads
  • rate limits
  • expired tokens
  • permission failures
• Add load/performance tests for endpoints likely to be high traffic.

Simple practical setup

If you want a solid baseline:

• OpenAPI spec
• Integration tests for all endpoints
• A Postman collection for manual QA
• CI running tests on every push
• Staging environment for final validation

If you tell me your stack (e.g. Node/Express, Django, FastAPI, Rails, etc.), I can recommend a concrete testing setup and example test structure.