Welcome

tanu: high-performance, async-friendly and ergonomic WebAPI testing framework for Rust

Motivation

As a long time backend engineer, I have always been passionate about building reliable and efficient systems. When working with WebAPIs, ensuring correctness, stability, and performance is crucial, yet I often found existing testing frameworks lacking in speed, flexibility, or Rust-native support. This led me to create a WebAPI testing framework in Rust.

While some WebAPI testing tools exist for Rust, they often lack ergonomics, are too low-level, or don't integrate well with modern Rust web frameworks. My goal was to create a framework that is:

• Fast and lightweight – Leveraging Rust’s zero-cost abstractions to minimize unnecessary overhead.
• Type-safe and ergonomic – Taking advantage of Rust’s strong type system to prevent common errors at compile time.
• Easily extensible – Allowing developers to integrate custom assertions, mocking, and performance metrics seamlessly.
• Concurrency and async-friendly – Supporting asynchronous requests and concurrent execution to test APIs efficiently.

I tried multiple solutions in the past but encountered significant limitations:

• Postman - Postman is a great tool but not designed for API end-to-end testing. You need a GUI and have to write assertions in JavaScript, which results in massive JSON files that become difficult to manage.
• Playwright - Playwright is an excellent framework for web end-to-end testing. While it does support API testing, I wanted to use the same language for both API implementation and tests, which Playwright does not offer.
• Rust Standard Test Framework - I attempted multiple times to write API tests using #[test], along with tokio, test-case, and reqwest crates. While functional, this approach lacked structure and ergonomics for writing effective tests at scale. I wanted a dedicated framework to simplify and streamline the process.

Writing Tests with Tanu

Writing API tests with tanu is designed to be intuitive and ergonomic. Here's what a typical test looks like:

use tanu::{check, check_eq, eyre, http::Client};

#[tanu::test]
async fn get_user_profile() -> eyre::Result<()> {
    let client = Client::new();

    // Make HTTP request
    let response = client
        .get("https://api.example.com/users/123")
        .header("authorization", "Bearer token123")
        .send()
        .await?;

    // Verify response
    check!(response.status().is_success(), "Expected successful response");

    // Parse and validate JSON
    let user: serde_json::Value = response.json().await?;
    check_eq!(123, user["id"].as_i64().unwrap());
    check_eq!("John Doe", user["name"].as_str().unwrap());

    Ok(())
}

// Parameterized tests for testing multiple scenarios
#[tanu::test(200)]
#[tanu::test(404)]
#[tanu::test(500)]
async fn test_status_codes(expected_status: u16) -> eyre::Result<()> {
    let client = Client::new();
    let response = client
        .get(&format!("https://httpbin.org/status/{expected_status}"))
        .send()
        .await?;

    check_eq!(expected_status, response.status().as_u16());
    Ok(())
}

#[tanu::main]
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> eyre::Result<()> {
    let runner = run();
    let app = tanu::App::new();
    app.run(runner).await?;
    Ok(())
}

Key Features Highlighted:

• Simple and Clean: Tests look like regular Rust functions with the #[tanu::test] attribute
• Async/Await Native: Full support for async operations without boilerplate
• Type-Safe: Leverage Rust's type system for robust API testing
• Ergonomic Assertions: Use check!, check_eq!, and other assertion macros for clear test validation
• Parameterized Testing: Test multiple scenarios with different inputs using multiple #[tanu::test(param)] attributes
• Built-in HTTP Client: No need to set up reqwest or other HTTP clients manually
• Error Handling: Clean error propagation with eyre::Result

Screenshots

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

The Apache License 2.0 is a permissive open source license that allows you to: - Use the software for any purpose - Distribute it - Modify it - Distribute modified versions - Place warranty

For more information about the Apache License 2.0, visit: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0