One frustrating element of our work life as Android developers is that we're often dependent of APIs. APIs can be unfinished, broken, or just slow, which all stall app development. It can be frustrating if we're trying to polish some UI elements, but cannot finish the work because of an unreliable API. We put up with these annoyances, because there is no alternative to use the real API, or is there?
In a previous tutorial, we've explored how to mock data with Retrofit, but that is cumbersome and not feasible with large datasets. In this tutorial, you'll learn an alternative with more capabilities and convenience: automatically mock a full API, including GET
, POST
, PUT
, DELETE
routes with minimal effort using the JSON server.
All you need is some sample data. It will take less than a couple of minutes to have your API running, promise! 🤘
Retrofit Series Overview
- Getting Started and Creating an Android Client
- Basics of API Description
- Creating a Sustainable Android Client
- URL Handling, Resolution and Parsing
- How to Change API Base Url at Runtime
- Multiple Server Environments (Develop, Staging, Production)
- Share OkHttp Client and Converters between Retrofit Instances
- Upgrade Guide from 1.9
- Beyond Android: Retrofit for Java Projects
- How to use OkHttp 3 with Retrofit 1
- Synchronous and Asynchronous Requests
- Send Objects in Request Body
- Add Custom Request Header
- Manage Request Headers in OkHttp Interceptor
- Dynamic Request Headers with @HeaderMap
- Multiple Query Parameters of Same Name
- Optional Query Parameters
- Send Data Form-Urlencoded
- Send Data Form-Urlencoded Using FieldMap
- How to Add Query Parameters to Every Request
- Add Multiple Query Parameter With QueryMap
- How to Use Dynamic Urls for Requests
- Constant, Default and Logic Values for POST and PUT Requests
- Cancel Requests
- Reuse and Analyze Requests
- Optional Path Parameters
- How to Send Plain Text Request Body
- Customize Network Timeouts
- How to Trust Unsafe SSL certificates (Self-signed, Expired)
- Dynamic Endpoint-Dependent Interceptor Actions
- How to Update Objects on the Server (PUT vs. PATCH)
- How to Delete Objects on the Server
- Introduction to (Multiple) Converters
- Adding & Customizing the Gson Converter
- Implementing Custom Converters
- How to Integrate XML Converter
- Access Mapped Objects and Raw Response Payload
- Supporting JSON and XML Responses Concurrently
- Handling of Empty Server Responses with Custom Converter
- Send JSON Requests and Receive XML Responses (or vice versa)
- Unwrapping Envelope Responses with Custom Converter
- Wrapping Requests in Envelope with Custom Converter
- Define a Custom Response Converter
- Basics of Mocking Server Responses
- Customizing Network Behavior of Mocked Server Responses
- Mock APIs with JsonServer