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Mohammad Waseem
Mohammad Waseem

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Streamlining Test Account Management with API Automation in a Documentation-Less Environment

#devops #api #automation

Managing test accounts in a development environment can be a tedious and error-prone process, especially when lacking proper documentation or standardized APIs. As a DevOps specialist, I faced this challenge firsthand and turned to custom API development to streamline operations and ensure consistency.

Problem Overview

Our team needed to create, manage, and clean up multiple test accounts across various environments rapidly. The existing manual process involved navigating through inconsistent UI workflows, which increased the risk of human error, lowered productivity, and made audit trails difficult to maintain.

Compounding the issue was the absence of documented API endpoints or clear integration points. This made it especially challenging to automate the process, requiring effort to reverse-engineer the system, understand the undocumented APIs, and build reliable scripts.

Solution Strategy

My approach consisted of three core steps:

  1. Investigate the system behavior and identify endpoints through network analysis.
  2. Develop a RESTful API wrapper to automate account management.
  3. Implement robust error handling, logging, and configuration management.

Step 1: Network Traffic Analysis

Using tools like Wireshark and Chrome DevTools, I captured the network traffic while performing account creation and deletion via the UI. I identified the key endpoints, usually REST calls such as POST /api/accounts, DELETE /api/accounts/{id}, and GET /api/accounts.

Step 2: Reverse-Engineering the API

Next, I constructed a set of sample requests mimicking the UI interactions, paying close attention to headers, authentication tokens, and payload structure. For example:

curl -X POST https://system.example.com/api/accounts \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"name": "test_account_01", "type": "test"}'
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This process required iterative testing to confirm the API's behavior, especially regarding response codes and payloads.

Step 3: Building the API Wrapper

With confirmed endpoints, I developed a Python CLI tool using the requests library that could programmatically create, list, and delete test accounts:

import requests

API_URL = "https://system.example.com/api/accounts"
TOKEN = "<your_token>"

headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

# Create a test account
def create_test_account(name):
    payload = {"name": name, "type": "test"}
    response = requests.post(API_URL, headers=headers, json=payload)
    if response.status_code == 201:
        print(f"Account {name} created successfully")
        return response.json()['id']
    else:
        print(f"Failed to create account: {response.text}")
        return None

# Delete a test account
def delete_test_account(account_id):
    response = requests.delete(f"{API_URL}/{account_id}", headers=headers)
    if response.status_code == 204:
        print(f"Account {account_id} deleted successfully")
    else:
        print(f"Failed to delete account: {response.text}")

# List all accounts
def list_accounts():
    response = requests.get(API_URL, headers=headers)
    if response.status_code == 200:
        return response.json()
    else:
        print(f"Failed to retrieve accounts: {response.text}")
        return []
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Best Practices and Lessons Learned

  • Iterative Testing: Reverse-engineering undocumented APIs requires careful and repeated testing to understand behavior reliably.
  • Error Handling & Logging: Robust error management ensures resilience, especially in automated workflows.
  • Configuration Management: Externalizing tokens and endpoints into config files or environment variables enhances security and flexibility.
  • Documentation & Community Sharing: Even minimal documentation can be shamelessly reverse-engineered; sharing findings benefits community support.

Conclusion

By developing custom scripts based on authenticated API calls—despite the initial lack of documentation—you can automate the lifecycle of test accounts efficiently. This approach minimizes manual effort, reduces errors, and provides a scalable solution adaptable to evolving system APIs, even in environments where official APIs are poorly documented or non-existent.

Automation with careful investigation turns a cumbersome manual process into a maintainable and reliable system, illustrating the power of DevOps and API-driven workflows.

Note: Always ensure that your activities comply with your organization’s security policies and obtain necessary permissions before reverse-engineering or automating system internals.

🛠️ QA Tip

I rely on TempoMail USA to keep my test environments clean.

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