Preface

This cookbook aims to complement the online SoapUI documentation and the wealth of excellent blogs out there. To do this, this book tries to put you in control of SoapUI by building your skills and understanding, so that if a solution isn't there already, you have what it takes to add it. To support this journey are 70 recipes, which are often in the form of hands-on worked examples, to build SoapUI framework knowledge, scripting skills, integration of open source libraries, and understanding of the technologies at play. In general, this book is not a beginner's guide, and tries not to repeat commonly available material or basic topics. Having said that, if you are new to SoapUI, but have basic Java skills and web service knowledge, then you shouldn't have too much trouble using this book.

Another aim of this book is to demonstrate SoapUI's API testing flexibility. To support this, RESTful web services and related technologies are given plenty of coverage. Also, with the plugin framework and scripting skills that you'll gain, there's no reason why SoapUI can't test most things!

As a cookbook, the way you read it is somewhat up to you and how experienced you are. The recipe format potentially allows experienced users to dip in and out of chapters, although some recipes are made easier by having completed others, which is normally indicated in their introduction or the Getting ready section. If you are new to SoapUI, then going through chapters 1 to 4 in order, may help give you a good foundation before skipping to more specialized topics.