Test RESTful Web services

With PhpStorm, you can test RESTful Web services. PhpStorm provides facilities to emulate interaction with a WebService by composing and running requests, as if you were the application that actually calls the service.

Testing RESTful Web Services is supported via the HTTP Client bundled plugin, which is by default enabled. If not, activate it in the Plugins page of the Settings dialog .

There are two main use cases when you need to compose and run requests to a RESTful Web service:

• When you have developed and deployed a RESTful Web service and want to make sure it works as expected, is accessible in compliance with the specification, and responds correctly.

• When you are developing an application that addresses a RESTful Web service. In this case it is helpful to investigate the access to the service and the required input data before you start the development. During the development, you may also call the Web service from outside your application. This may help locate errors when your application results in unexpected output while no logical errors are detected in your code and you suspect that the bottleneck is the interaction with the Web service.

Testing a RESTful Web service includes the following checks:

• That URL addresses are constituted correctly based on the service deployment end-point and the method annotations.

• That the generated server requests call the corresponding methods.

• That the methods return acceptable data.

PhpStorm enables you to run these checks directly from the PhpStorm code editor.

If necessary, configure the Proxy settings on the HTTP Proxy page of the Settings dialog.