kanishkrawatt for Requestly

Posted on Oct 29 • Originally published at requestly.com

How to Simulate Real User Journeys With Collection Runner

#webdev #api #testing #apiclient

In the world of API development and testing, it’s not enough to verify that each endpoint works in isolation. Real users don’t just hit one endpoint, they follow multi-step flows like signing up, logging in, updating data, and retrieving records. To truly validate your product, you need to test how these flows perform from end to end.

That’s where Requesty’s Collection Runner comes in.

Why Simulate User Journeys?

Most critical bugs don’t come from individual endpoints, they come from the interactions between them. A successful login that returns an invalid token, or a profile update that fails silently, can ruin the user experience and go unnoticed if tests don’t mimic real behavior.

Simulating real user flows helps you:

Validate business logic and data dependencies
Detect regressions that break chained functionality
Catch errors caused by state mismanagement or inconsistent environments
Build confidence that your product works as users expect

Requesty: A Collection Runner Built for End-to-End Testing

Requesty’s Collection Runner allows you to create and execute sequences of API requests with full support for:

Chained workflows
Dynamic variable passing
Pre-request scripting and test assertions
Environment switching

Here’s how to build and simulate a real-world user journey using it effectively.

Example Flow

New User Sign-Up → Login → Profile Setup → Data Fetch

This user journey includes:

Creating a new user via POST /register
Logging in using POST /auth/login to retrieve a JWT token
Setting profile data using PATCH /profile
Fetching user dashboard data via GET /dashboard

Step 1: Create the Flow as a Collection

In Requesty, collections are simply ordered groups of API requests.

Add each step listed above as a separate request in your collection.

Step 2: Link Data Between Steps

Use variable chaining to pass values dynamically between requests. For example:

Capture the userId and token from the login response
Inject them into headers or URLs in the following steps

// Example test script in /auth/login to extract token and user ID

// Parse the JSON response from the login request
let response = rq.response.json();

// Store the authentication token in the environment
rq.environment.set("auth_token", response.token);

// Store the user ID in the environment
rq.environment.set("user_id", response.user.id);

In the next request (such as PATCH /profile), include the authorization header as shown below:

Authorization: Bearer {{auth_token}}

Test Assertions and Validation

Each step in your API flow can include automated assertions to verify that responses meet expectations. These checks can include:

Status codes (e.g., 200, 201, 400)
JSON schema compliance
Business rules such as "email_verified": true

Assertions ensure your APIs behave correctly under real-world conditions and that regressions or logic errors are caught early.

Run Against Different Environments

Requesty supports environment switching, allowing you to execute the same collection across development, staging, and production without changing base URLs or tokens manually.

This ensures consistency across environments and helps uncover environment-specific issues.

Monitor and Share End-to-End Runs

After running your collection, you can:

Review pass/fail status for each request
Track response times and identify slow endpoints
Export or share detailed results with your team

This makes it easier for QA teams, product managers, and DevOps engineers to monitor system health and collaborate on fixing issues efficiently.

Real-World Use Cases

E-commerce: Add item → Checkout → Payment → Receipt
SaaS Onboarding: Create organization → Invite user → Accept invite → Create workspace
Fintech: Register → KYC → Deposit funds → View balance

Testing endpoints in isolation doesn’t reflect how users actually interact with your product.

Simulating complete workflows ensures that your system functions correctly across every step of the user journey.

Final Thoughts

End-to-end workflows are where your users truly operate.

To guarantee a reliable experience, you must validate the entire process, not just individual API calls.

Requesty’s Collection Runner simplifies this by combining automation, flexibility, and detailed reporting to help you detect issues before they impact users.

Ready to simulate your first user journey?

Try Requesty Collection Runner today.

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