Automating Authentication Flows in Go on a Zero-Budget Project

Source: Dev.to

In today’s fast‑paced development environments, especially when working with limited resources, automation becomes a vital component for efficient quality assurance. As a Lead QA Engineer, I faced the challenge of automating authentication (auth) flows for a web application using Go, all without any extra budget or paid tools. This post outlines the strategic approach, technical implementation, and lessons learned from this experience.

Why Automate Auth Flows?

Authentication flows are critical for security and user experience. Manual testing of login, registration, token refresh, and multi‑factor authentication (MFA) can be time‑consuming and error‑prone. Automating these repetitive tasks ensures consistency, fast feedback cycles, and better test coverage — especially important in continuous integration pipelines.

Constraints and Approach

Limited by zero budget, the key constraints were:

• No paid SaaS or testing platforms
• Limited access to commercial testing tools
• No dedicated test environment, relying on local or free cloud resources

Therefore, I chose open‑source tools, native Go libraries, and built a lightweight, reliable testing framework tailored to our needs.

Building the Automation Framework

1. Utilizing net/http for Requests

The Go standard library’s net/http package is powerful enough to craft and send all necessary requests. For authentication, we primarily deal with POST requests to login endpoints and handling tokens.

package main

import (
	"bytes"
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"io/ioutil"
	"net/http"
)

func login(username, password string) (string, error) {
	payload := map[string]string{
		"username": username,
		"password": password,
	}
	jsonData, err := json.Marshal(payload)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}

	resp, err := http.Post(
		"https://api.example.com/auth/login",
		"application/json",
		bytes.NewBuffer(jsonData),
	)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("Login failed with status: %s", resp.Status)
	}

	bodyBytes, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}

	var result map[string]string
	json.Unmarshal(bodyBytes, &result)

	token, exists := result["token"]
	if !exists {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("Token not found in response")
	}
	return token, nil
}

This function automates login and extracts the auth token from the response.

2. Managing Auth Tokens and Session Persistence

Tokens need to be reused across multiple requests. Store tokens in memory or in a simple file to simulate session persistence.

func authenticatedRequest(token, url string) (*http.Response, error) {
	client := &http.Client{}
	req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", url, nil)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+token)
	return client.Do(req)
}

3. Automating Multi‑Step Flows

Auth flows often involve chained requests: login, token refresh, MFA, etc. Automate sequences with functions orchestrated via test scripts.

func runAuthFlow() {
	token, err := login("testuser", "password123")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Login failed:", err)
		return
	}
	fmt.Println("Login successful, token:", token)

	resp, err := authenticatedRequest(token, "https://api.example.com/user/profile")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println("Request failed:", err)
		return
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()
	body, _ := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
	fmt.Println("Profile data:", string(body))
}

4. Verifying Flows and Handling Errors

Use assertions and simple check functions to validate each step, raising alerts or logs on failures.

func assertStatus(resp *http.Response, expected int) bool {
	if resp.StatusCode != expected {
		fmt.Printf("Expected status %d but got %d\n", expected, resp.StatusCode)
		return false
	}
	return true
}

Lessons Learned

• Leveraging Go’s native libraries minimizes dependencies and costs.
• Structuring scripts as functions allows scalable testing of complex auth flows.
• Continuous integration with tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or Travis CI is straightforward, with scripts running automatically.
• Proper error handling and logging are essential for identifying issues during test runs.

Final Thoughts

Automating auth flows without budget constraints requires clever use of open‑source tools and language features. By building a modular, resilient framework in Go, I was able to maintain high‑quality testing standards, ensure security compliance, and deliver reliable authentication functionality—all within zero financial investment. This approach proves that with the right mindset and technical discipline, impactful automation is achievable without additional costs.

Happy coding and automating!

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