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Testing

Every application should be well tested. Actix Web provides tools to perform integration tests against your applications and unit test tools for custom extractors and middleware.

Actix Web provides a request builder type. TestRequest implements a builder-like pattern. You can generate a HttpRequest instance with to_http_request() and call your handlers or extractors with it. Also see

Integration Testing For Applications

There are a few methods for testing your application. Actix Web can be used to run the application with specific handlers in a real HTTP server.

TestRequest::get(), TestRequest::post() and other methods can be used to send requests to the test server.

To create a Service for testing, use the test::init_service method which accepts a regular App builder.

Check the API documentation for more information.


If you need more complex application configuration, testing should be very similar to creating the normal application. For example, you may need to initialize application state. Create an App with a data method and attach state just like you would from a normal application.


Stream Response Testing

If you need to test stream generation, it would be enough to call into_parts() and convert the resulting body into a future and execute it, for example when testing Server Sent Events.


Unit Testing Extractors

Unit testing has pretty limited value for applications, but can be useful when developing extractors, middleware, and responders. Given that, calling directly into handler functions which are defined stand-alone, without using routing macros (like #[get("/")]) is possible if you want to make assertions on custom Responders.