Hi everyone and best wishes!

Over the years, I have several times written code that consumes the GBIF API. So far, proper unit testing of this code has been problematic, because I had to test it against the "real" GBIF API, with several drawbacks (fragility, test needs network connectivity, speed issues, ...). I think other libraries (pygbif for example) probably face the same problems.

I am therefore thinking about creating a GBIF API mock server, that could be run locally and mimicks requests/responses cycles of api.gbif.org, to make testing our tools in isolation easier. It would have the following characteristics:

• Be a (localhost-runnable) server rather than a mock library, so it can be used by code in any language
  
• Mock the responses from api.gbif.org (starting with the most common stuff: read-only queries on occurrences, registry, ...)
• Be super easy to install and run locally

I'm thinking of implementing it in Golang, since it seems to fit those requirements quite well and I'd like to build real-world experience with this technology.

Ideally, I'd like to write that is not only useful for myself, so here is my question: would you be interested in using such a mock server for your developments? Or isn't that so usefull? Maybe you know existing tools that can already be used to solve this problem?

Thanks for your feedback!

Nicolas