QAToolKit Engine Probes library

Description

QAToolKit.Engine.Probes is a .NET Standard 2.1 library that contains network probes to test servers/services with protocols like HTTP, TCP, ICMP (Ping).

When you have a complex software system and would like to check its liveness or read some statuses, you can use the QAToolKit Probes library.

You can quickly write tests or protocols to send PING, send TCP messages, or hit an HTTP endpoint.

Then get the results and process them further depending on your needs.

Supported .NET frameworks and standards: netstandard2.0, netstandard2.1, net7.0

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1. Ping Probes

A Ping Probe is an ICMP echo request that checks if a particular host is "alive" or that it can return the echo to us.

From Wikipedia: Ping operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets to the target host and waiting for an ICMP echo reply.

You can use it to check if a host is up or down, but not much more. It can be used as a first in line test since it's the fastest.

To create a Ping probe, you can easily do it like this:

PingProbe pinger = new PingProbe("google.com");
PingResult result = await pinger.Execute();

logger.LogInformation($"Success: {result.Success}");
logger.LogInformation($"ReplyAddress: {result.ReplyAddress}");
logger.LogInformation($"Time: {result.RoundTripTime}");
logger.LogInformation($"TTL: {result.Ttl}");
logger.LogInformation($"BufferLength: {result.BufferLength}");

PingProbe generates a PingResult which contains a lot of useful information.

2. TCP Probes

A TCP Probe can do much more than a Ping Probe. If you have an IoT or any other service listening for TCP connections on a specific port, this is a probe for you. You can easily send an array of messages or commands to a TCP address and get the responses.

To create a TCP Probe, you can easily do it like this:

TcpProbe tcpProbe = new TcpProbe("tcpbin.com", 4242, new[] { "HELO\n" });
TcpResult result = await tcpProbe.Execute();

logger.LogInformation($"ResponseData: {result.ResponseData}");

We connect to the tcpbin.com:4242 and send a message HELO + newline character - "Helo\n". Since this is an ECHO service, we will get back what we sent - "Helo\n". You can read the reply message from the TcpResult.ResponseData property.

3. HTTP Probes

An HTTP Probe creates a simple HTTP request to your specified URL address. Only two parameters are necessary to make an HTTP Probe; Url and HttpMethod.

It would be best to use HTTP probes for simple HTTP requests; that's why you can not specify and authenticate or JSON payloads. Here are some examples:

test if a website index page returns OK - 200
test a health check API endpoint returns OK - 200
test that an Azure storage file is not visible and returns Forbidden - 403

If you want to do comprehensive HTTP service tests, please use QAToolKit HttpTester Library.

To create a HTTP Probe, you can easily do it like this:

HttpProbe httpProbe = new HttpProbe(
        new Uri("https://swagger-demo.qatoolkit.io/swagger/index.html"),
        HttpMethod.Get);
HttpResult result = await httpProbe.Execute();

logger.LogInformation($"StatusCode: {result.StatusCode}");
logger.LogInformation($"ResponseBody: {result.ResponseBody}");

In the example above, we connect to the https://swagger-demo.qatoolkit.io/swagger/index.html by making a GET request. We wait for the response and can extract the StatusCode and ResponseBody from it.

4. Implement your custom probes

If you want to follow the QAToolKit convention, you can create your probe by implementing IProbe<T> interface.

Below we create a MyProbe that implements IProbe<string> with single method Execute().

public class MyProbe : IProbe<string>
{
    public Task<string> Execute()
    {
        ....
    }
}

To-do

This library is an early alpha version
Support for more probes (UDP,...).

License

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

qatoolkit/qatoolkit-engine-probes-net