Mockaton is an HTTP mock server for simulating APIs with minimal setup — designed for testing difficult to reproduce backend states.

Dashboard

Demo (Docker)

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

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

Dashboard: localhost:2020/mockaton

Test it:

curl localhost:2020/api/user

Basic Usage

npx mockaton my-mocks-dir/

Mockaton will serve the files on that given directory. Filenames can have dynamic parameters and comments. Each route can have different mock file variants.

Route	Filename	Description
/api/company/123	api/company/[id].GET.200.json	`[id]` is a dynamic parameter
/media/avatar.png	media/avatar.png	Statics assets don’t need the above extension
/api/login	api/login(invalid attempt).POST.401.json	Anything within parenthesis is a comment, they are ignored when routing
/api/login	api/login(default).GET.200.json	`(default)` is a special comment; otherwise, the first mock variant in alphabetical order wins
/api/login	api/login(locked out user).POST.423.ts	TypeScript or JavaScript mocks are sent as JSON by default

Config Docs

How to control Mockaton?

Besides the dashboard, there’s a Programmatic API.

How to scrape responses from a backend?

There’s a Browser Extension for scraping responses from your backend.

How to create mocks?

Example A: JSON

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

{ "name": "Acme, Inc." }

Example B: TypeScript or JavaScript

Exporting an Object, Array, or String is sent as JSON.

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

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

Example C: Function Mocks

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 toa 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.'
  })
}