The RoutingHTTPServer project provides a great way to implement HTTP-based unit tests in iOS projects. The BRRoutingHTTPServer project provides a static library framework bundle that simplifies integrating RoutingHTTPServer into your project.

First clone this repository, and initialize the submodules:

git clone [email protected]:Blue-Rocket/BRRoutingHTTPServer.git
git submodules update --init --recursive

Open the BRRoutingHTTPServer Xcode project, and then build the BRRoutingHTTPServer.framework target. This will produce the BRRoutingHTTPServer/Framework/Release/HTTPServer.framework framework bundle.

Copy the HTTPServer.framework bundle into your project and add as a required build dependency. You'll also need to add the following frameworks:

• BRCocoaLumberjack.framework (available in the lib directory of this project)
• libxml2

In some situations, if you're using BRRoutingHTTPServer for unit testing, you may need to add a linker flag -force_load with an argument that provides the path to the HTTPServer static library file. If your unit test crashes from an error like

+[NSNumber parseString:intoUInt64:]: unrecognized selector sent to class 0x2c8f0c

then you'll need to do this. Add a linker flag like the following:

-force_load "$(PROJECT_DIR)/lib/HTTPServer.framework/HTTPServer"

where the actual path is appropriate to your project's environment.

If you're using BRRoutingHTTPServer in an actual application, you can most likely just add the -ObjC linker flag, without the -force_load flag.

The SampleHTTPServer project, included in the repository, demonstrates how to integrate BRRoutingHTTPServer into another project. You must first build the framework as described above, and then you can open this project. The project does not contain a useful application, rather it contains example unit tests that make use of the HTTP server provided by the HTTPServer framework, using the popular AFNetworking HTTPClient class as the client. An example unit test method looks like this:

- (void)testGetFavoriteColors {
	[self.http handleMethod:@"GET" withPath:@"/colors" block:^(RouteRequest *request, RouteResponse *response) {
		[response setHeader:@"Content-Type" value:@"application/json"];
		[response respondWithString:@"[\"red\",\"orange\",\"blue\"]"];
	}];
	
	NSArray *colors = [operations favoriteColors];
	STAssertNotNil(colors, @"Colors");
	NSArray *expected = @[@"red", @"orange", @"blue"];
	STAssertTrue([colors isEqualToArray:expected], @"Expected colors");
}

The method verifies that a HTTP client class, HTTPOperations, correctly calls the HTTP GET operation /colors and processes the JSON response into an array of strings. This shows the basic pattern for unit tests using this framework:

1. Set up blocks to execute when specific HTTP methods and paths are requested
2. Execute client code
3. Verify the client processed the HTTP response correctly