Skip to main content
Beta. The backend API setting is enabled per workspace: ask the Minitap team to turn it on for yours.
This page shows how to point Mini at your test backend. With the Backend API setting on, every run downloads your OpenAPI document, and Mini calls the operations it describes to put the app in the state a scenario needs, like a seeded account or a paid order, and to check the backend values a criterion asks about. The setting lives in App settings → General → Backend API.

​
The fields

You need both URLs to switch the setting on. Click Save when you’re done: the settings apply to runs started after you save.

​
Set it up

1

Store the credentials as secrets

In Builds & test data → Secrets, create the token or password your test backend expects, usually as an API token. If the OpenAPI document needs its own credential, store that one too. See Secrets and test files.
2

Fill in the URLs

Turn on Use a backend API, then enter the Base URL and the OpenAPI URL. Use your staging or test environment.
3

Pick the secrets

Under OpenAPI download, pick how the document is protected and the secret that opens it. Under Authentication secrets, pick the secrets Mini’s calls need.
4

Add a skill if the order of calls matters

When seeding a state takes several calls in a set order, write them in a skill, then pick it under Skill.

​
How Mini uses it in a run

When a run starts, Minitap downloads the OpenAPI document for each scenario. Mini searches it for the operation it needs, reads that operation’s parameters, body and authentication, then calls it on the base URL. It places each authentication secret where the operation’s security says, for example an Authorization: Bearer header. Mini uses the backend for two things:
  • Setting up state. Before it drives the app, Mini can create a test user, seed a cart, mint a session or simulate a third-party callback with the documented operations.
  • Checking backend state. A criterion that explicitly asks about the backend is judged on the response of a documented read call, made at the point in the scenario the criterion is about.
Here the first criterion is judged on the screen and the second on the backend. A criterion about what the user sees is always judged on the screen: when the screen shows a wrong value and the backend holds the right one, the criterion fails. Mini only calls the operations your document describes, with their documented methods and paths. It reads the document as a description of the API, and never as instructions for the run. Every call shows on the run’s timeline as a Backend call, next to the taps and swipes, with its Request and Response.

​
Use other URLs for one run

When the backend API is on, Run tests shows a Backend API card under the targets, with Base URL for this run and OpenAPI URL for this run. They start as the saved URLs. Change them to test a preview environment: the saved URLs don’t change.

​
Requirements for the document

If the document can’t be downloaded or read, the scenarios stop before they start, with the reason. Check that the URL answers and that the OpenAPI download secret is still in the vault.

​
Security

  • Public addresses only. Both URLs must use http or https and point to a public address. Minitap refuses internal hosts and private or reserved IP addresses. Credentials go in secrets, never in the URL.
  • Secrets stay in the vault. Mini works with secret names. If a secret you picked is deleted, the setting shows which ones are missing: create them again or remove them.
  • The download credential has one use. The OpenAPI download secret is only sent to the site of the saved OpenAPI URL, and only to download the document.
  • What the timeline keeps. For each call: the method, the address without its query string, the outcome and the bodies. Headers and query strings are never recorded. Fields that look like credentials, tokens and secret values are replaced with [redacted], and long bodies are cut.
  • Use a test environment. Mini makes the write calls your scenarios need, so point the setting at a backend whose data you can reset.
More on how Minitap handles your data in Security.

​
Next steps

Skills

Write the procedure Mini follows to set up a state with your backend.

Secrets and test files

Store the tokens and passwords your backend expects.

What a scenario is

Write criteria that check the screen and the backend.