Run newman on the local build instead of deploying to a test environment using TeamCity

I am looking to be able to run my postman scripts using newman during a TeamCity build.

Instead of deploying the build to a test environment, I'd like to run the postman scripts on that particular build, so it isn't deployed to an environment used by other developers which could potentially break it.

My current build chain in TeamCity is:

Build main project (contains the REST Api and all required code)
Run Postman scripts using Newman on that project

I have the collection and environment file, along with the CLI command to call it. When I try and point the environment for a local build, it does not work.

I am thinking of running an IIS Express server on the agent and then with that active port, run the tests but I have been unsuccessful.

Any ideas on how to approach this would be appreciated!

I have looked at How do I integrate my Postman Integration Tests with TeamCity and this uses a test environment, which is not what I am after.

I looked at https://ie.com.au/a-how-set-up-automated-api-testing and this was helpful, but I think this is still reliant on setting up a test envrionment.

Solution

TeamCity isn't really equipped to handle what you are trying to do. You are trying to run API tests against a build, in order to do that, you'll need an environment. You need something to run your project in order to query against it.

The only potential path you might try looking at is containerizing your project, in docker or something similar, then running your image after it's built and querying against that. However this isn't a great practice and bloats the build time.

A good practice would be to build your project > deploy it to a test environment, you should set up a separate 'test' or 'dev' environment that is ok being broken > after deploy trigger a service to run your tests against the 'dev'