The fact that OutSystems is a fast development platform has created a problem in API-driven projects. Blocking teams regarding APIs needs.

Thus, the development team is often blocked due to external API dependencies. This leads to extra work to unblock themselves from those dependencies, through the creation of mock APIs. Mocking is part of the software development lifecycle in almost every organization. And with CI / CD, to continuously develop and test applications you have to handle multiple dependencies.

Some advantages to using API mocks in your development:

• You can do feature work even if your external dependencies are unavailable
• You have the flexibility to emulate the API structure you want
• You can repeatedly test the same scenarios
• Frontend developers and backend developers can work in parallel
• The frontend can act as a standalone application during development without any backend API dependencies.
• Easy to demo
• The mock API can easily be replaced with the Real API once it’s ready

The purpose of this component is to help reduce the negative impact that the uncontrolled creation of mock data can have on projects and applications that are being developed, through 3 different approaches to building mock APIs in OutSystems.

This component will show how you can begin frontend development by mocking the backend through these 3 simple approaches:

• JSON in Server Action (or Service Actions)
• API mocking frameworks and tools
• REST/SOAP APIs