Mockaton is an HTTP mock server for simulating APIs. With it, you can test API errors, edge cases, and difficult to reproduce states.

This will spin up Mockaton with the sample directory included in this repo mounted on the container.

git clone https://github.com/ericfortis/mockaton.git --depth 1
cd mockaton
make docker

Test it:

curl localhost:2020/api/user

Mockaton has no dependencies.

npm install -g mockaton

mockaton --port 2020 my-mocks-dir/

Mockaton will serve the files on the given directory. It's a file-system based router, so filenames can have dynamic parameters in square brackets. Also, filenames can have comments, which are anything within parentheses, this way each route can have different mock file variants. Similarly, each route can have different response status code variants.

• Configuration : CLI and mockaton.config.js
• Programmatic API, in which you can delay a route, select a different mock file, such as a 500 error, among other options

Mockaton has a Browser Extension that lets you download in bulk all your API responses following Mockaton's filename convention.

npx skills add ericfortis/mockaton

Write it to your mocks directory. .ts files are served as JSON by default.

mkdir -p my-mocks-dir/api
echo "export default { name: 'John' }" > my-mocks-dir/api/user.GET.200.ts

For JSON responses, use TypeScript (or JS), and export default an Object, Array, or String.

• Route: /api/company/123
• Filename: api/company/[id].GET.200.ts

interface Company {
  name: string
}

export default {
  name: 'Acme, Inc.'
} satisfies Company

• Route: /api/company/123
• Filename: api/company/[id].GET.200.xml

<company>
 <name>Acme, Inc.</name>
</company>

With a function mock you can do pretty much anything you could do with a normal backend handler. For example, you can handle complex logic, URL parsing, saving to a database, etc.

• Route: /api/company/abc/user/999
• Filename: api/company/[companyId]/user/[userId].GET.200.ts

import { IncomingMessage, OutgoingMessage } from 'node:http'
import { parseSegments } from 'mockaton'

export default async function (req: IncomingMessage, response: OutgoingMessage) {
  const { companyId, userId } = parseSegments(req.url, import.meta.filename)
  const foo = await getFoo()
  return JSON.stringify({
    foo,
    companyId,
    userId,
    name: 'Acme, Inc.'
  })
}